Tales of a Rogue Jinchuuriki
by TigerHeart
Summary: AU, Pairing, OOC, badass but slightly less powerful Naruto. Naruto Uzumaki wants one thing. Freedom. He wants the freedom to forge his own destiny and find love and acceptance in a hostile world. Yet life can take its toll. Many obstacles lie in his way and the the people who he comes to love are themselves in danger and he must bear their burdens as well as his own.
1. Inari's Fate

**A/N: I've designed this story to be an arc driven one, the first arc will take a couple of chapters, and most of the others I am planning on just being one-shot chapter arcs about a rogue Naruto in an alternate version of the Narutoverse. At some point (depending on how many more Arc ideas I come up with) I will make a conclusive arc to the story that will be a couple of chapters long. As a whole I'd say this story is going to take somewhere between 12 and 26 chapters.**

 **Update: I've edited this chapter according to some advice that I received. I did my best to fix the dialogue as much as possible, and I think I've done a pretty good job, but some of it still feels off to me. I find it very hard to balance dialogue with chapter progression. So, that is something that I have to work on and improve. I'll probably edit this chapter in future some more until I am fully satisfied with it. Anyway, I hope you will enjoy reading this chapter.**

Tales of a Rogue Jinchuuriki

Introduction

The Tailed-Beasts, also known as the Bijuu. They are gigantic godly creatures of immense power. One stamp of their feet can cause earthquakes, a swish of their tails can rip up tidal waves out of the oceans or wipe away mountains. In total there are nine Bijuu each with a different number of tails. The One-tails is a gigantic sand raccoon, the Two-tails is a flaming bakeneko, the Three-tails a colossal tortoise, the Four-tails a prideful fire elemental Gorilla, the Five-Tails a Whale-horse hybrid, the Six-Tails an immense slug, the Seven-tails a giant flying rhinoceros beetle, the eight tails a titanic Octopus-Ox and lastly the strongest of all, the Nine-tails a demon fox. The power of the Bijuu is considered by many people to be too great to control. However, one method was found to be successful, by sealing them inside people. People like this are called Jinchuuriki, once the Bijuu is sealed inside, the Jinhcuuriki may be able to borrow some of the Bijuu's chakra and thus wield some of it's power. Not surprisingly Jinchuuriki are often treated like garbage. To their superiors they are nothing more than human weapons, simply assets to be used in times of war. They are viewed by normal people as demons or sub-humans.

This is the story of Naruto Uzumaki, Jinchuuriki of the Nine-Tailed Fox, who left his home Konoha –The Village Hidden in The Leaves- in pursuit of love and freedom.

Chapter 1 – Inari's fate

A new chapter in the life of Naruto Uzumaki was heralded not by a bright new day but with the darkness of a cloudy night where even the stars are concealed. Naruto who was now fifteen years of age stepped out of the small wooden boat which smuggled him into his new home country, hardly a word was exchanged between him and the smuggler who would hush the blonde lad quickly if he tried to strike up a conversation. If the authorities found the pair of them they would most certainly be killed. The ruler of Wave Country did not like anyone coming into or going from his land that he did not know about, and he ruled with a blood stained iron fist. Wave Country was a minute, miserably stormy and impoverished land and so most people would not even consider going there anyway. The exception was one particular set of individuals, rogue Ninja. Because Wave Country didn't have its own Ninja village to persecute them many rogue Ninja saw it as a safe haven. It was for this reason that Naruto came here, he wanted to live a humane peaceful life. Four years ago he left his birthplace Konohagakure and had been hunted from place to place ever since. In each place he stayed although it was only for a short while he made a living by hunting for food and stealing. Theft was not something Naruto liked doing as he felt it was dishonourable and so he resigned himself to taking only what he felt was necessary like food, clothing or cash.

Once Naruto stepped out of the boat the smuggler had already begun to leave, silently pulling his oars he faded into the misty dark.

Naruto scrambled about to get a bearing of where he was, it seemed that the smuggler had dropped him off on sparse area which was surrounded by nothing but empty fields and the odd farmhouse. He trundled his way across these fields, onto a road and eventually found a place to rest. It was in an open clearing surrounded by thorny scrubs not far from the roadside, he lit a small fire and fell asleep in a position where he would be ready to guard his belongings if needed. His possessions were few, he wore an orange shirt and khaki pants both of which he stole from somebody's clothes line and shinobi sandals which he mugged from a drunken Ninja outside a bar. On his back he wore the rucksack which was stolen from a shop, containing a blanket to sleep with, some food, a canteen of water and medicinal herbs which Naruto had gathered on his travels. He also kept a kunai knife sheathed in a pouch at the side of his rucksack.

Naruto awoke to the morning light which was filtered by a thick layer of pale grey clouds. It was two hours past dawn. He shook the dirt off his blanket, picked up his things and went on walking along the path.

In his travels Naruto never once got a job, the reason for that was because most jobs were boring hard labour usually on a farm and didn't pay much. They were practically slavery, and the whole point of Naruto's defection was to be free. But on a small island country like Wave Country the fishing industry would be very large and Naruto figured that being a fisherman would be more interesting of a job. It had its hardships to be sure, but Naruto was well used to hardships. At heart Naruto was an adventurer and to go out and brave the dangers of the sea time and time again sounded like something that would suit him. He wanted to head to a town or village to try and find a job in the fishing industry.

After a couple hours of walking aimlessly he eventually found a river and followed that river to an area that was thick with mangroves, he struggled through the dense woodland in order to follow the river and was about to give up when he found a small bridge that crossed the river, he climbed onto the bridge and followed the small dirt track that came after it. There was a smell of sea salt in the air much to Naruto's delight and in the distance he could see a sizeable settlement, he began to run very quickly eager to get to the place. Only to slow down to a walk when he began to approach two shady looking young men in their mid twenties standing on either side of the road.

The man to Naruto's left had his very muscular and tattooed arms crossed. The man to the right possessed a katana.

When Naruto was within two metres of the duo they shifted their position to the middle of the road blocking Naruto's path. They looked to each other and smirked assuming that the boy would be intimidated by them. This was not the case however.

"Get out of my way!"

The two men were taken aback by Naruto's shout. The one with the katana was so surprised that he visibly flinched at Naruto's mere words. These two thugs were used to dealing with easily intimidated people who didn't have the guts to fight back. They had confronted the boy without properly assessing him and assuming that he'd be just like any citizen of the country who were as cowardly as sheep but now that they took a proper look at him they realised that couldn't be further from the truth. With his long untamed and uncut spikey hair that draped down to his back, the whisker like marks on his face and the fierceness of his eyes he looked more like a wild animal to them. One that could not be intimidated.

Naruto stared at the men for a moment sizing them up for himself. This made them highly uncomfortable, sweat poured down their faces as they visibly crumbled before him. Seeing this display of cowardice Naruto laughed loudly at the thugs and continued walking.

They stepped aside for him.

Then he turned his head to the thugs and insulted them by saying; "You should should stop spending your time harassing people and switch to pigeons because that's all you cowards can probably handle."

"Y-you should watch your t-t-tongue!" One of the thugs stuttered angrily.

"Oh yeah? Or what!"

"Our boss Gato has tons of men!" The other exclaimed. "If you don't show respect you'll be sorry!"

Naruto smirked. "Well, if the rest of his men are even slightly like you two I don't think I need to worry."

The man with the katana gritted his teeth and unsheathed his sword "Bastard!" He ran to the boy and held up the katana to strike. Naruto swiftly grappled the hilt of the katana and swept his leg under the man's to nock him over. The thug fell to the ground on his back and his comrade watched helplessly as Naruto now had possession of the sword. The blonde manoeuvred the sword so that the blade was facing downwards. Then the man gave a screech of terror as Naruto stabbed downwards. After a moment of whimpering the thug looked opened his watery eyes to see that Naruto had stabbed the ground and not him.

The blonde then put his weight on the blade and snapped it in two. He threw the broken weapon aside and much to the delinquent duo's relief he left them alone, sauntering over to the town without so much as a cautious glance backwards.

The town that Naruto came to lacked any sort of vigour. The people seemed to walk around despondently, their chatter was not happy, many of them looked half starved and some of them were homeless. The pallid wooden buildings in the town were in disrepair. As Naruto walked about he began to question if he should have come here at all. As he made his way through the streets he came upon a rather large commotion. A crowd of people had gathered and were watching something happen. Naruto asked one man what was going on as the throng of people was so thick that he could not see for himself what even had attracted the crowd.

"Oh, Gato's men are taking away some people again."

"Who is Gato?"

The man frowned, "You're not from here are you? You should be careful they'll try to take you away too."

"Oh? But I didn't do anything." Naruto lied while trying to prevent his lips from twisting into a smile.

"That doesn't matter. Gato is a terrible man, he's been the bane of this country from the very moment he set foot in this land. But recently he's gotten even worse, he takes away homeless people or people who can't pay their taxes."

Naruto's eyes widened. "Really? What happens to them?"

"We don't know." The man said gravely. "There is a rumour that they get taken away to an island in the Land of Sea, and that's about all anyone knows."

"I see." Naruto said as he began to move forward.

"What are you doing?!" The man asked.

"Naruto turned his head and said with a smile, "I'm going to stop these bastards!"

A couple of the people in front of him overheard him and moved aside for him. Seeing this the rest of the crowd followed suit. They all watched in astonishment and fear at the fifteen-year-old boy's bravery or as they saw it recklessness. Naruto was not being brave from his perspective however, for these thugs did not scare him in any way. In fact, what Naruto found more startling was how not scared he was.

The thugs looked at him very fearlessly themselves for they outnumbered him twenty-five to one. They were all men between the ages of twenty and fifty and were armed with spears or katanas.

They had a group of people tied up in a circle with rope, many of them had been crying but had stopped and now looked to Naruto with astonishment in their eyes. The men readied their weapons. Naruto did likewise, taking out the kunai from the sheath in the pouch of his rucksack which he then threw down in front of him.

"Well well." One of the thugs said dryly. "Looks like we have a hero. Or rather a little boy who thinks he can play hero!" The thugs broke into a guffaw, but Naruto took that as an opportunity to jump on one of them, the man toppled over onto the ground as Naruto stabbed him in the head. The men stopped laughing and for a brief second each of their faces turned to a mask of shock. This only lasted for a moment and they began to charge brandishing their weapons.

Naruto met them head on and bashed a good few of them over with his shoulders. His kunai seemed to move on it's own, like a bloodthirsty hawk it thrust into the gangster's bodies taking their lives ravenously.

And in what seemed like only a few seconds fourteen more of the men were slain. The ten remaining men fearfully swarmed away from Naruto, like panicked cockroaches they scrambled over each other in a desperate attempt to flee.

The crowd on onlookers did not rush to help the tied up people as they themselves were afraid of the blonde after having seen the quick battle. Even the people that Naruto had saved were somewhat fearful of him, the flinched as Naruto cut open the ropes with his knife.

Once they had been liberated they left with the crowd, some thanked the boy nervously, only one of them stayed. He was a boy four years Naruto's junior with black hair and tattered clothes. He sat despondently staring at the ground not caring that he was freed. "You're an idiot." He mumbled.

"What? I saved your ass and now you insult me." Naruto said indignantly.

"You'll get yourself killed, you may be strong enough to take out a few of Gato's men but he has hundreds more of them. Some of them are Ninjas even stronger than you. My father tried to sand up to Gato and got himself killed. My grandfather hired Ninja from Konohagakure to protect him and he was still assassinated for trying to build a bridge to the land of Fire."

"I didn't ask for your life's story twerp." Naruto folded his shoulders.

The boy looked at Naruto utterly speechless. He wasn't expecting Naruto to be so unsympathetic to him, and least of all so rude. He'd lived in lonely isolation for so long now. Begging all day for food, hiding away from Gato's henchmen at night. He had nobody to talk to, and when somebody finally came around to talk to him, that person just insulted him. It brought tears to the boys eyes and he soon began to cry.

Naruto watched the boy cry until the boy's cry subsided into a tired sob.

Naruto shook his head. "Crying isn't going to get you anywhere kid."

"What else am I supposed to do?!" The boy bleated angrily. "What else can I do? My life is over, everyone I loved is dead, nobody is around to take care of me anymore, and I can't face this world by myself!"

"What's your name?"

"Inari."

The blonde took the Inari's hand and helped him up."I'm Naruto."

Inari looked up at Naruto. "You're an asshole Naruto."

"Maybe." Naruto replied. "But I'm an asshole who cares. Believe me when I say I've gone through something similar to what you're going through now."

Normally Inari would have scoffed at a comment like that but something in Naruto's eyes told him that there what Naruto was saying was true.

"Hungry?" Naruto asked.

"Inari nodded."

"Thought so. How about I teach you how to find food for yourself in the wild?"

* * *

An hour later Naruto and Inari began searching around the coastline for discarded fishing nets, or any useful pieces of litter, they quickly found some torn fishing net material that had presumably been torn off by jagged rocks. Naruto showed Inari how to repair the net using a method that was shown to him by a fisherman he met along his travels. Once that had been done the two kids made their way down to the river that Naruto had came to the town by, the river here was a tributary of one of many much larger rivers that cri-crossed Wave country, and indeed rivers served as the main route of transport in this land which Inari told Naruto, cutting through the mangroves to build paths was quite difficult.

They went to a shallow part of the tributary that was about shin deep. Naruto began building a makeshift blockade across the river consisting of a two lines of rocks that began from both sides of it's banks and stopped close to the centre just before they met. This centre was where Naruto placed the small amount of fishing net that he repaired.

"What we are trying to do here", Naruto explained to Inari, "is to channel the fish into the net by throwing rocks at the river and startling them so they swim into the net. The lines of stones stop them swimming around it."

As Naruto instructed Inari began to throw rocks further ahead upstream of the line of stones and eventually after nearly an hour of effort they were successful in catching two small fish. Inari looked at the creatures with hungry eyes which didn't go un-noticed by Naruto. "Let's find somewhere that we can rest and light a fire so we can cook these beauties eh?" The younger boy nodded eagerly. Looking to the sky the blonde decided that it would be OK to sleep in the open as it mas much clearer now and was unlikely to rain.

They made their way down to a beach and settled at a spot that was above the high tide mark, Naruto sent Inari out to look for driftwood while he cut the heads off of the fish and gutted them. He also placed stones in a circle to mark out where the fire would be located. Inari returned struggling with a large pile of driftwood in his arms Naruto immediately began to light the fire using a lighter and some a tinder ball that he made from some grass and flakes of bark.

As Naruto did this he was reminded of the people of his home and how many of them possessed the ability to light a fire without using a lighter or matches. Instead they could use their chakra to create a flame, sometimes with chillingly deadly efficiency. Naruto did not possess this ability. In fact, his use of chakra was terribly poor. He couldn't even manage something as elementary as a simple Transformation Jutsu or a Clone Jutsu, these were simple techniques of illusion that just about every Shinobi know.

Once the fire had got itself going Naruto stuck a stick through each of the slices of fish and began roasting them in the fire with Inari, they each ate half of the fish they caught. As they were eating Inari picked up a seashell and asked Naruto how to cook shellfish. At this Naruto made a face of disgust. "You have to be very careful with shellfish." Naruto explained. "I made the foolish mistake of eating one that was already dead, and even though I cooked it it still made me as sick as a dog." Naruto visibly cringed. "I thought I was going to die back then."

"How do you tell if it's dead or alive?"

"If it is closed then it's most likely alive, if it's open then close it and if it opens up again then it's definitely dead." Naruto shook his head. "They don't contain that many nutrients anyway. You'd probably need to eat about forty clams to get enough protein for one day."

Inari nodded. "Oh and on a side note how would you light a fire without a lighter."

"Fire sytle ninjutsu." Naruto said plainly. "But I'm guessing you don't know that."

Inari shook his head.

"Well then I'd say your best bet would be to use flint and steel to make a spark. You can find flint wherever there is chalk formations. Also flint can make some pretty useful tools for cutting as well." He reached into his bag and took out a flint stone which he threw to Inari. "Here take it."

Inari took the flint and placed it in his pocket. As he did so he realised that for the first time in years he felt truly happy. At first he thought Naruto was little better than the thugs that he feared, somebody who liked to gloat about and exert his strength over those weaker than him. But as Inari got to know Naruto he soon learned that wasn't so at all. Naruto was like his deceased stepfather, Taiza. Spending time with Naruto reminded Inari of the time he spend with Taiza. He began to cry again. This time It was tears of happiness.

"What the hell." Naruto said to him self amusedly.

That night the two boys went to sleep soundly, and glad of each others company.

* * *

For the past four years Inari had woken up cold and alone with no idea if he'd have anything to eat that day and nobody to talk to. And for those first few moments he thought that he was still in that situation. But now he had a companion who helped him out in so many ways, and for the first time in years he felt a warmth of heart that he hadn't experienced since his grandfather was alive and his mother was at his side.

But Inari had all too quickly forgotten the situation that he was in.

It was a still morning and the clouds had returned in the skies, the sea was quiet. There was a hush in the air. Inari looked around for his new friend and didn't find him. In fact, none of his possessions were at the fireplace save alone the blanket that was wrapped around Inari that Naruto had lent him.

Suddenly Inari felt a sharp pain in his side and he realised that he'd somehow been propelled across the beach, he tumbled in the sand and the small grains of earth got into his eyes, his nose and his throat. When he stopped rolling he only had a second to right himself and attempt to cough out the gritty material in this throat before he felt two hands grab him by his arms. He forced his eyes open despite the insurmountable instinct to keep them closed, to see that he was being held by two of Gato's thugs. Only this time not ordinary brutes, but Ninjas. Their faces were covered and they each wore a battle gauntlet on one of their arms, which probably were poisoned and had some sophisticated uses.

"Where is he?" One of the Ninjas demanded. "Where is the man you were with, the one who killed fifteen of our men! Tell me or I'll break this puny arm!"

Inari was too shocked to say anything.

"Don't wast your time Meizu." The other one replied. I don't think we'll be able to get much useful information out of this one anyway. We'll still have a lot of work to do when we get back to the compound. Torturing this one would be a waste of our time brother. And besides I'm not sure if he was with anyone anyway, I can't sense any sort of a presence other than ours, so he must have left this one on his own a while ago. Either that or he's just really quick, and if that's the case we should let Zabuza fight him instead."

Naruto watched from afar as the two thugs took Inari away. He'd woken up early to scout out the land and was just on his way back when the Ninja arrived. Once he saw them he ducked down behind the marram grass on the sand dunes and concealed his presence. He watched the discourse unfold helplessly. As the two thugs took Inari away he watched helplessly, following them from a distance not getting too close but not letting them out of sight either. They moved quickly. They did not seem like the strongest of Ninja, but he knew well that he was still no match for them. Nevertheless, he felt an obligation to rescue Inari. He'd grown fond of the boy and came to think of him almost like a younger brother despite not having known him for very long. The two of them were very similar in many ways.

After an hour of following from a distance Naruto reached a small compound near a pier which appeared to have been built recently. The blonde did not go near the building and hid in the nearby mangroves, concealing his presence, and watched. For hours. Guards lined the walls of the place and stood atop the cliffs facing behind it. None of these were Ninja, but they would most certainly be able to alert the Ninja from earlier who Naruto had not yet seen leaving the compound. Eventually Naruto bore witness to three boats filled with people leaving the pier. He could not see Inari among them but knew that he must be. Eventually he saw the two Ninja leaving the compound an hour after the boats had left. Naruto had assumed rightly that they were waiting for him in ambush probably expecting him to rescue the prisoners.

He watched them make their way out of the compound and into the distance, once he was sure they had left he began to make his way into the compound for himself. Getting past the guards was quite tricky but Naruto was as good at sneaking around as a jungle leopard. He scrambled through the mangroves right down to the shoreline, quickly making sure first that there wasn't any dangerous wildlife lurking nearby. He took off his clothes and left them in the bag, taking only his kunai with him.

He swam over to the pier beside the base, like a crocodile he lay in wait underwater for a guard to turn his back. The chance arrived and he grabbed a guard from behind covering his mouth so he could not scream. The man flailed about as the Jincchuuriki dragged him down into the water. Because he was panicking so much he lost his breath all too fast and was quickly drowned. Naruto let the man's corpse float up to the surface. It came to the attention of the other guards and they panicked at the sight of it, abandoning their posts. This gave Naruto the chance he needed to sneak into the building unnoticed.

At this point Naruto began to feel an inkling of fear. He did not know who was inside the structure, there could be other Ninja, perhaps even stronger than the two who took Inari away. Not wanting to draw any attention to himself Naruto crept threw the halls and ducked into rooms as people passed by. Eventually he found a room entitled 'manager's office'.

Naruto burst into the room to find a very startled man in a suit who instantly recognised the boy. He told the boy everything that he knew about where the boats were going, it wasn't much though. All the man knew was that the boats were going to the demon island in the Sea Country. Naruto told the man that he was not going to kill him and that he would just nock the man out. He lied. The blonde struck the man with a blow to the head that made him unconscious, but after that he slit the man's throat. He could not let the man live because he would be able to inform people where he was headed, that would be risky.

After searching around the building more Naruto managed to find a compass, an atlas and some food. He ate as much of the food as he could in one setting, and decided to use the other two items to navigate his way through the journey ahead. He was able to sneak out of the building and return on foot as the death of the manager had drawn all of the guards into the building. He returned to the cover of the woods and came back to his bag in order to dress himself, just in time as the tides were rising. He wasted no time in making a raft to take him out of this land. By scouring the coastline for litter he found materials that would be useful, such as driftwood, netting, the broken end of a discarded oar and most important of all some rope. He searched the wilderness for bamboo.

He built the base for his raft by lining up large shafts of bamboo beside one another, he chipped a hole in the ends each using his kunai and placed a smaller shaft of bamboo through the holes at each side to hold them in place. He further strengthened the raft with some rope. He then tied down another bamboo shoot at the end as a cross beam to give further strength to the raft. He then began to make a sail, the frame of the sail was made from bamboo, and the sail itself wad made from palm leaves woven into a discarded fishing net which Naruto had cut into a sail shape. He spent the night gorging himself as much as possible on whatever nuts and fruits that were remotely edible that he could find as well as collecting as much fresh water as he could into plastic bottles.

He left at the crack of dawn as he did not want to be sailing in this raft at night time. It was quite a struggle for Naruto to make his way through the breaking waves he paddled with all his might and just managed to get across the breaking waves and onto open waters. At this point his raft lay low in the water and the the sea crept up onto his legs. Naruto had to do running repairs for the next few hours just so he could stay afloat. Using his sail, his oar and and his compass he navigated his way across the empty seas, and for hours he could sea nothing but the horizon. Only when the sun began to set did he see any land at all and he reached it at the end of twilight. Exhausted from his journey he shuffled his way up the beach and fell asleep in the middle of a field next to some farmer's livestock.

He awoke the next day to birdsong and the the gentle whistling of grass. He hastily gathered his things and moved onwards to a seaside town, judging by the signage he could tell that he had arrived in Udon no Kuni as he'd planned. He hailed the first person he could find, a fisherman who was folding his nets down in his dory. "Do you have any ship bound south to the Sea country archipelago or to Tea Country? The fisherman shook his head.

"Nay, although there is an ship headed for the Eastern reach of this land."

Naruto bid the fisherman his thanks and in the same haste as he had come to the town he found the ship of which the fisherman spoke. She was a large trim boat of fifty oars painted red. Naruto sought out the shipmaster and asked passage of him.

"Do you have any money?"

Naruto's supply of money was very little, his income was limited to picking up whatever he could find on the ground and he'd learned to live in the wilds without the need for money. Naruto showed the ship master everything he had, all in all about 220 ryo, which would not be enough to pay for the journey.

"No." Replied Naruto. "But perhaps I can earn my passage. Do you need a pair of hands? I can row for you."

"Well we're short two men. Find your place in the benches." And after that the shipmaster left and paid Naruto no more heed.

So, laying down his bag of possessions Naruto became for five bitter days an oarsman of that grim ship. They left at noon and that day Naruto thought that he would not survive the journey, for all training in Konoha and travels had not prepared him for the relentless pull of the galley oars to the beat of the drum. Each shift of rowing was about three hours or so, and the time or rest only seemed enough for Naruto's arms to stiffen. The second day was even worse for Naruto, but after that he hardened to the labour and got on well enough. There was no camaraderie among the crew of this ship. Most of the oarsmen were slaves, most likely bonded into labour in order as a result of falling into debt. The others were like Naruto, they worked for passage, and some worked for money. Although the pay was hardly worth it. The ship masters were harsh slave drivers who whipped relentlessly at the bondsmen. They never laid their whips on the back of an oarsman who worked for pay or passage. But there would be no friendliness among a crew of whom some are whipped and others are not.

When they arrived at the Eastern Cape of Udon no Kuni Naruto saw a high coastline battered by rainy winds and a small grey town crouching at the back of a harbour, in the only low part of the headland. It was here that the free men were bid to leave, it was already dark and Naruto was tired. He desperately wanted shelter so he went to an inn and spent all the money he had. However, for one night he got to sleep in a soft bed. It was pure bliss to him. The next morning, he lingered as long as he could before he was bid out by the inn owners. After which he went outside into the blistering winds, there were a few people about. Although nobody would go out to sea in this weather. Naruto asked the men if they knew of a ship going to the Sea Country Archipelago.

"Nay lad. These days the waters round that place a rife with danger. A few years ago a Kaiju came to those waters and the Daimyo of the Archipelago has done nothing about it. I've heard so many stories of shipwrecks there that I've lost count. Very few people would go there now."

"But I need to go there. The life of a friend of mine depends on it!"

"Well." The fisherman began gravely. "There is one boat here that nobody owns." He pointed to a small dory with the name _"Beelzebub"_ written on her prow in blood red. "When that boat came into this harbour what sailed it I could only describe as a demon. It wore a red cape and in it's centre was a black circle with a triangle inside the circle in black. It wore a beak like plague mask. It walked out of the boat and off into the distance. Because of this many of our village believe it to be cursed. And well I'm not the most superstitious of people, the trade of a fisherman is dangerous, and the last thing I'd want to do is to tempt fate. In fact, nobody in the town likes it here. They'd be grateful if you took it away."

"I will take this cursed boat out of your town then." Said Naruto calmly. "But first do you know where I can find water?"

"There is a river yonder." Said the man.

Naruto gave the man his thanks and went to the river to refill his plastic bottles which he'd drank empty. When he came back to the boat he found that it was still in good shape. The skies were grey and there was a wind about the place but despite as Naruto set out rowing gallantly for a whole day and night. He found his travels much easier on this boat than on the bamboo raft he had fashioned for himself.

The riptides helped him out of the Eastern Cape and once he got onto open waters the wind blew his way and he travelled swiftly. He came to rest upon the easternmost isle of Water Country just as the winds began to turn to the North. Water country was like Fire Country from which Naruto hailed, one of the Five Great Elemental Nations, a giant Archipelago of twelve great islands, each bigger than Wave Country was. The largest of these Islands was the home of one of the five great ninja villages, Kirigakure.

The coastline of this island was low, and Naruto could see stretching for miles a great marshland and in the background lingered a snow peaked mountain range. He landed here but did not linger and the following morning he went swiftly to the next island which he could see in the distance. For the next two days he hugged the coastline of this second island which was very much like the first, only here and there he spotted farmland and woods. He landed every now and then to forage for food. He munched on reed grass shoots, and ate the seeds of wild rice. Neither tasted very good but they grew in abundance and Naruto did not have to work hard to find them. He also managed to ambush a rabbit and kill it with a rock. Its fatty meat gave him much needed protein.

The Beelzebub sailed sailed on south for a third day and entered the Kanashi Ocean. Using the compass Naruto rowed south, but the winds were against him so he hugged the coastline of Nagi Island. Like before whenever his supply of water ran thin Naruto returned to land to refill his supplies. All in all it took him ten days to reach the southernmost cape of the Island. Here Naruto spent two days resting and preparing for a treacherous journey across the Kanashi Ocean. For soon he would be travelling nothing but a thousand miles of water, with no place to filled his boat as much as he could with bottles of water to last him for the journey, he also found a sheet of plastic which he could use as a cover for when the rain.

On the third day he set off cleaving southwards to his last stop before the great Kanashi Ocean. An island south of Nagi Island that had no official name. Many simply knew it as as Southern island, it remained ungoverned and barely a soul lived there for the land was harsh and rugged and poor. The coast of this island was giant and jagged. It took Naruto a day to find a place to put his boat, a small beach on an inlet.

Naruto saw with his own eyes that this land was indeed as bare and sparse as he'd heard. However he knew from his own background that such a place as this could be used for weapons testing or training. He began to sense that nefarious things were at work on this island. He stared back at Beelzebub and the small boat glinted in the sunlight in such a manner that Naruto was reminded of the glint in a maniac's eyes. Shaking his head he left the place as soon as he was rested. It would not be for sometime later that Naruto would find out what truly was at work in this place. And it was more horrible than he could have imagined.

Naruto heaved his boat out of the beach and sailed out of the place, the winds pushed him along as if air itself wanted to get away from that dreadful place. The first three days of sailing were easy. Naruto realised that he hadn't spoken a word in days and had been silent, he tried clearing his throat and speaking. His voice was feeble. Even if he had spoken loudly it would still amount to nothing in the vast emptiness of the ocean.

Naruto felt truly tiny. He was in awe of his own weakness. Every once in a while he would strip naked, tie a rope to his leg and to the boat and dive down with his kunai in hand in the hopes of finding something to eat. Only once every couple of hours would he come by a shoal of fish and he did not get near them.

However, Naruto would not get such an opportunity because the weather took a turn for the worse. A great dark advanced in the skies on his fourth day and like a tide of shadows engulfing everything behind it. In the depths of the cloud lightning flashed erratically. With the cloud came great swells so large that Beelzebub had to climb them as though they were hills. Naruto could only brace himself, there was no controlling the path of his boat. All he could do was have faith that he would not be thrown off course. The rain soaked him to the bone and the wind hit him so hard that the boy felt as though he was being slapped in the face. He tried to shout, but his voice was drowned out in the torrent. He just waited and sat out the storm which seemed endless.

Eventually the storm passed in what Naruto thought was three days, maybe. He could not tell day from night because the sky was so dark all the time. The weather was gloomy for the next five days but calm and Naruto rowed on. He was so cold and stiff that he'd forgotten what it was like to be warm. His stomach pained him so much that he didn't even realise that he was cold. Indeed, he'd grown noticeably thinner and more ragged. When he looked at his arms his bones seemed to protrude from his skin a little more than before.

Over the next few days the sun returned, it beat down harshly on Naruto's back and worse he began to run low on water. As fortune would have it though he saw a gannet and knew that land must not be far, although he could not see it. He tried to cover himself to shield himself from the sun and to prevent his sweat from evaporating. However, after two days of relentless drought Naruto's supply of water was gone. He spent the third day trying to hunt for fish, but was unsuccessful. He splashed himself with saltwater so he would not need to sweat as much but despite his efforts by the end of the day he was parched. His throat ran dry.

Night fell and it was in the dusk that he got the first sight of land. He rejoiced meekly, for he was saved. Taking hold of his oars he felt his second wind come and he rowed daringly towards the land. But all of a sun Beelzebub toppled over. She'd managed to make her way through the storm and had proven to be most seaworthy so Naruto was shocked to see what happened. He wondered if it was the Kaiju that the fisherman spoke of. He looked around and all he could see was a white hand attached to an un naturally long arm dragging him into the abyss. He soon lost his breath and fell unconscious.

* * *

The next thing Naruto saw was a raging fire. Or rather the reflection of one in water. But when he looked above the surface he saw no fire, only empty blackness. And Naruto found himself knee deep in this water. He trudged forward along a dark tunnel, on it's walls were strange spirals and patterns that he did not understand. There seemed to be something ancient and primeval about them. Eventually he came to a huge spectacular chamber as vast as the cavern of a mighty underground cave that stretches hundreds of metres below the ground. At the end of the cavern was a towering gate at it's centre was a circular seal with intricate patterns etched into it. At first all Naruto could see beyond the gate was blackness. But as he drew nearer it soon turned to shifting shadows and he could hear a great and deep breath. Then, in a mere instant, two great red eyes with black snakelike pupils opened.

It was then that Naruto awoke once more.

He found himself underneath a warm duvet and lying atop a fresh mattress. He no longer felt parched and was warmed by a crackling fire. Too tired stiff and feverish to care where he was or who he was with he fell back to sleep.


	2. A comfortable Awakening

**Authors note**

In the last four months this is all I wrote. Kek. See you in the next chapter.

Naruto awoke silently lying comfortably on a futon bed atop a clean tatami mat inside a quaint room with walls of wood. He was so engrossed in his pleasant surroundings that he did not worry about where he was or who lived in this house. There was just the soft bed and its warm embrace. He was in a cocoon of comfort the likes of which he hadn't felt for years.

A door slid open from behind him. He sat up and turned to see a girl. She was the same age as he. Her hair was black as were her eyes. She wore a blue tunic blouse and black pants. She had bandages that crossed her face and parts of her body.

"I see you are awake." She said. Her voice was both gentle and dignified, even with the many bandages she wore.

Naruto stared at her for a moment, dumbfounded by her elegant beauty and also hesitant and unsure of what to do. He decided on asking a simple question. "Where am I? How did I get here?" His normally hoarse voice was even more so than usual.

The girl set down a jug of water in front of him. "You are at my house."

Naruto took the jug and drank it with relish. He didn't realise it but he was completely parched. "What country?" Naruto asked while wiping his lips with his wrist.

"The land of Sea". The girl in bandages went on explaining to him what had happened. "Two days ago, early in the morning, I went diving for fish and found you underwater. I thought you were dead but I brought you to shore and there you coughed up water and began to breathe. So I took you here and you've been asleep until now."

Naruto sat up and thought for a moment about what the girl had just said. "Thank you." He finally said after a moment of silent contemplation. "You saved my life. I owe you a great deal. If there is anything I can do for you I'll do it."

The girl smiled. "Well why don't you start off by telling me your name?"

Naruto smiled back. "Sure, my name is Naruto Uzumaki." Normally he would not tell anybody his full name, and indeed after saying it aloud he inwardly questioned what he'd just done. But he sensed goodness in the girl, he knew instinctively of her kindness, so he figured it was all right to tell her his full name.

"I'm Isaribi." The girl said quietly. After their introduction Isaribi moved on to the pressing matter of the physical condition of the boy in her care. "How are you feeling?"

"Better than I've felt in quite a while and it's all thanks to you. I'm a lucky man!" Naruto exclaimed, then his stomach growled loudly enough for Isaribi to hear it. "I'm also a bit hungry hahaha!"

"Well then how about we get something to eat. I've prepared some food." Isaribi said, pressing her fingers together excitedly. It would be the first time in an age that she wouldn't have her dinner alone.

Naruto eagerly got up at the prospect of quelling his hunger which no matter how much he stuffed himself would always come back some time or other. "Sounds good."

Isaribi was rather taken aback by Naruto getting up, she honestly didn't expect him to be able to do so after nearly drowning and being unconscious for two days. "You sure you'll be alright getting up?"

Naruto nodded. "Yes I'm fine, I need to walk around. Gotta get my leg muscles working again." And he proceeded to walk around the room quite normally without even so much as stumbling.

The quick recovery of the boy in her care was astonishing to Isaribi. She looked at him and thought about his speedy recovery. Most people would barely be able to move if they were in Naruto's position, and furthermore he managed to escape death while being asphyxiated underwater. There was something strange about the boy.

Naruto noticed the way Isaribi was looking at him, it was a look similar enough to the ones the villagers back in Konoha would give him. They gazed upon him like he was some sort of subhuman. However, while the villagers' gazes were mixed with hatred, Isaribi showed no sign of hatred, but he still didn't know why she was looking at him. "What!" He spoke much more loudly and much more harshly than he intended to.

Isaribi, a naturally shy girl was taken aback. "Oh, um sorry I, uh, was just amazed with how fast you recovered is all." As she spoke her voice got progressively quieter.

"Yeah, I recover from injuries faster than most people would." Once again Naruto came of as angrier than he would like to have appeared. Yet while it was advantageous to be able to heal faster it was just one more item on a long list of things that separated him from the rest of his species. Flashbacks of Konoha whirled through his mind, adults all around him three times his height staring at him with fear and resentment in their eyes.

Naruto could feel pent up rage growing out within him ready to blossom like a poisonous flower.

But he realised what he was doing. He took a deep breath and released it with a pained sigh.

"I'm sorry." He said. "Didn't mean to be irritable."

Isaribi waved her bandaged hands reassuringly. "Don't worry it's fine. You did just wake up!"

"It's just I was reminded of some things I'd rather forget about is all." Naruto.

Isaribi nodded. She could tell that he'd been through quite a lot, although exactly what he'd been through was a mystery to her and it piqued her interest.

She walked out of the room and motioned for Naruto to stay where he was. When she returned to Naruto it was with two plates of salmon steak and some vegetables.

Naruto's eyes gleamed with delight as he ate the dinner with gusto. Isaribi wasn't even halfway finished when Naruto asked if there was more food. Isaribi smiled and told him to wait for a moment. She brought two loafs of bread which she'd baked herself. Naruto then proceeded to stuff himself with the two loafs. When they were both done Isaribi looked at Naruto and giggled to herself.

"What?" Naruto asked with incredulity.

Isaribi struggled to get her laugh under control. "It's just, heh heh, that I didn't eh-expect you to eat two entire loaves." She laughed some more before stopping.

"Well I'm still hungry." Naruto deadpanned.

Isaribi shook her head. "You can't be serious!"

"I'm not don't worry." Naruto patted his belly which was now larger than usual. "I'm actually quite full.

Isaribi sighed with relief. "Phew. I'm glad, I thought you'd eat me out of house and home."

Now it was Naruto's turn to laugh, and he did so heartily when he finished he smiled to himself and realised that this was the first time that he'd laughed for a long time.

However, his thoughts drifted back to Inari. The reason he came here in the first place was to rescue him. But then again, he also figured that Inari was probably dead by now anyway. The ship Inari was on had reached its destination probably only a day or two after it had left, whereas Naruto didn't even know how many days it had been since he began his journey. Naruto began to wonder if the purpose of embarking on that perilous sea voyage was for suicidal reasons rather than actually caring about Inari. Naruto shook his head vigorously. "No I can't think like that." He murmured to himself.

Isaribi noticed the shift in Naruto's mood. "Hmm?"

"Sorry. I just remembered something I had to do."

"Oh. What's that?"

"It's a long story." Naruto began. He proceeded to explain to Isaribi everything that had happened in the land of Waves, from fighting the guards to helping out Inari, to travelling across the Kanashi ocean.

From what Naruto could tell Isaribi was very much impressed by his bravery and lack of tolerance towards Gato's lackeys, but also very concerned. His sheer recklessness was nothing short of disturbing to her, and she asked him if he had a death wish. He told her that it didn't matter.

"All that matters is that I'm going to rescue Inari and all the other prisoners and I'm going to find whoever is responsible for this alongside that Gato guy, and put an end to them." Naruto's chest and shoulders heaved with an excited rage.

There was an evident unease growing in Isaribi after Naruto had explained his situation. Naruto attributed this unease to concern for his wellbeing.

"I think it's time for you to leave now." Isaribi said with a sigh.

"Huh?" Naruto was taken aback by Isaribi's seemingly out of place words. He'd thought that Isaribi had really taken a liking to him. Then again perhaps she was just being nice, she had rescued him and fed him so he didn't want to cause her any trouble. "OK." Isaribi opened the front foor of her house and Naruto walked out. The first thing that was apparent to Naruto was how badly damaged her house was, some of the windows were cracked or broken, there were splinters scattered all around her house and haphazard repairs done where these splinters were concentrated. Worst of all, the word Subhuman was painted onto her house.

Isaribi looked embarrassed, as though she'd forgotten about the defilement of her home until now.

"The hell is this?" Naruto asked.

"I don't want to talk about it." Isaribi replied timidly.

"Who did this?"

"Just some of the local kids."

Naruto looked around at the damage and the graffiti in silence for a good minute. After that he let out a sigh. "Want me to help repair your house?"

"No need." Isaribi replied. "I'm getting a carpenter to help me with it."

"Alright then." Naruto walked over to Isaribi and gave her a hug, this caused the girl to blush. "Thank you for everything. I'll see you around."

Isaribi detached herself from the embrace. "Goodbye."

The countryside of the land of Sea was glorious in its beauty, the sun beamed down on lush green grassy fields which danced with the soothing wind. Yet all the worlds beauty meant nothing to Naruto at this point. No rays of light could reach him. He was in a pit of enragement, fixated on the past. What he had seen as he left Isaribi's house put him in a foul mood. He walked for thirty minutes and reached a small town, the buildings were very simple cottages and none of the people who lived there were very wealthy, just simple country fold and fishermen. There was a small market place in the centre of the village where there were food stalls. Despite it being just around midday nobody, which would be the busiest time for the markets nobody was around. Naruto went up to one particular fishmonger who was packing up his things and getting ready to leave. The man looked to be in his sixties and had a greying beard.

"Are you here to buy something?" He asked sceptically. When Naruto shook his head then man sighed and then replied "Yeah, thought so."

"I'm looking for information, I'm not from around here you see."

"Ah you're a stranger, well I knew that already of course. What do you want to know."

"Hmmm, well for starters do you know anything about the girl Isaribi? She has bandages all over her body and.."

"Yes, yes I know Isaribi, she's the talk of the village. You're definitely a stranger if you don't know anything about her."

"She doesn't seem to be very liked."

"Of course not, she's bad luck. Some say she's a demon or that she's cursed. She's the only person that disappeared who came back."

"Disappeared?"

"Oh right, you see there is one Island in the land of sea that is deserted, demon Island. Some people say it's cursed, if you venture too close you'll disappear. Happened to my cousin, he was out diving with some of his workmates. They foolishly went too close to that island. Only one of them survived. Lady by the name of Aoi, said that when she returned to their boat my cousin and the others were gone. She looked for them for a while and there was no trace of them. Nobody who disappeared was ever seen again, except for her."

"Hmm, demon island you say, I came to this place because I believe my friend might have been taken there."

"Hmm, that confirms my suspicions that something bad going on there. Listen kid, I wish you well and all but don't get me involved in this. I don't want to have been seen around you if whoever is responsible for all these disappearances catches you."

"I understand. But one last question, why is this town so deserted?"

"Cause most of the town are going after Isaribi right now."

"What?!" Naruto took a couple of steps back. "You mean there is a mob of people going to her house?"

The man nodded. "You must have just missed it, there was a whole gathering about twenty minutes ago." He frowned. "You're not thinking of trying to save her now are you?"

Naruto clenched his fists. "I'd better go."

The man waved him off. "Yeah, just leave."

Naruto sprinted back the way he came, he cursed at himself for not staying with Isaribi, his rage lent him speed and resolve and he managed to get near Isaribi's house just as the mob approached it.

He was ten metres behind the mob when he saw Isaribi. She stood in front of them all, perfectly calm. She also wasn't alone, however. Four men were by her side. Two of whom he recognised as the ones who took Inari away. They wore black leather armour and had spiked chains wrapped around their arm. And the other two were clearly also Ninja they wore long sleeved purple clothes but had their faces covered. Naruto no longer approached the mob, he began to walk back from where he came but decided to stay and watch what happened. Isaribi seemed to be pleading with the ninja, but she stopped when one of the purple clad men smacked her in the face. She fell to the ground and began to tear up. That same man kicked her and ordered her to do something and so she struggled to her feet, tears streaming down her eyes. Then something completely unexpected happened. Isaribi, loosed her bandages and showed a number patches of fish like scales on her body. The patches of scales grew over her body until they covered her entirely, she doubled in size and grew hideous sharp teeth, he hands and feet became webbed and scales grew over her whole body. At this the people began to cower and Naruto watched as Isaribi along with the four ninja tore most of them to shreds. It only took a brief minute and the shoreline was covered in the blood of men and women. Naruto ducked back in fear, his heart throbbed in his chest. He had seen many things in his time, but never had he seen something this disturbing. After a moment where he dared not move he meekly peeked over the rocks that he hid behind to see that the few surviving villagers were being restrained by the purple clad ninja. Isaribi was nowhere to be seen. One of the black clad Ninja looked in Naruto's direction and motioned toward his counterpart.

"Shit!" Naruto cursed as he rushed to his feet and took off like the wind. Sand was kicked up high into the sky by the furious pace of his legs. It was not long before he reached the edge of the beach. But by then Naruto was starting to tire, he had been on his feet for most of the past hour, without a drop to drink. And the sun beat harshly down on his back. His lips were parched. The ninjas were not far behind and they, although more heavily clad did not seem to tire as he did. Naruto knew that he would not be able to escape them. He would have to make a final stand. But he was unarmed, and compared to his assailants unskilled in combat. He dared not try to escape into the see, as he knew opponents as dangerous as these would be skilled in the art of chakra manipulation and would be able to walk over the water's surface. They were equipped with jagged chains, no doubt poisoned. And there were two of them. He was outmatched, outnumbered and ill equipped. He was not going to win a fight, not a fair fight anyway. But Naruto had no intention of playing fair.

One of the ninja unleashed the long jagged chains that were equipped to them. It flung out three metres ahead of him, Naruto hearing the clank of the chain turned his head saw it coming his way and managed to narrowly dodge it. However the process of dodging it put him in an awkward stance and so he fell to the ground. In the absence of weapons Naruto had to improvise, when he was running along the beach he did not squander the chance to plot ahead and while he was running picked up a sharp rock on his way and concealed it under his clothes. Naruto, now face down on the ground rolled himself just in time to look up at one the Ninja standing over him. The other was standing behind with his arms folded. The ninja pulled down his face mask and gave a triumphant smirk. "Our comrades had told you that they dealt with you earlier."

"What did you do with Inari?"

"That boy you were with? We sent him off to the lab to be experimented on, I can assure you he suffered a very painful death." The ninja's eyes glistened cruelly. "Don't worry though, you won't suffer the same fate

"Lab? Experiments?" Naruto asked bewilderedly.

"Yes, I suppose I might as well tell you since you are going to die anyway. The guy I work for has partnered up with this scientist that is making super soldiers, that girl you saw earlier who killed them villagers, she's one of the prototypes."

The other ninja spoke, "brother let's just kill him already."

The unmasked ninja nodded.

'I need to do something to get his guard down quick' Naruto thought to himself frantically. The ninja drew his knife, it clicked against its hilt as he did so. Naruto did the only thing he could think of doing at that moment and spat on the Ninja's face.

The ninja growled in anger and kicked Naruto under the chin, knocking him back a few metres. "You bastard!" He paced over to the boy frantically. Just for that I'm going to make this extra painful."

Naruto's head ached and the whole world around him was spinning from the massive blow that was dealt to him. But even so everything was going according to his plan. 'Good now is the time. Naruto thought to himself, I've made myself appear weak and helpless and I've pissed him off. He won't be able to see this coming.

As the ninja charged towards him with his knife drawn Naruto shot up and pulled out the sharp rock from his pocket. Due to his anger the ninja did not see this coming and was momentarily stunned in surprise and frustration, this moment was enough for Naruto to get the upper hand. He yelled furiously and jammed the rock into the Ninja's throat, tearing open his windpipe. The ninja stumbled backwards and collapsed.

The second Ninja charged at Naruto and Naruto was ready to intercept him but his charge was a feint. The brother jumped back and released the chain that he had equipped to his arm, Naruto had to jump over to the ground to dodge the chain attack. But now this time he was helpless. The remaining Ninja drew back his chain onto the device attached to his arm and readied the chain on his other arm.

This was it. Naruto was out of options. There was no way he could dodge this attack. It seemed that this was game over for him.

A sharp clinking sound found its way to Naruto's ears, and just as he was about to fire his chain a steel bolt pierced the Ninja's head and he fell down to the ground completely lifeless.

Naruto looked over to his right and saw an armoured man standing with a crossbow in his arms surrounded by a number of other similarly dressed men equipped with crossbows or katanas.

Naruto stumbled to his feet, his head still shook in pain. He saluted the armoured man. "Thank you, you saved my life."

The first brother to be struck down wasn't dead yet, however and he stumbled towards Naruto aggressively with the knife in his arm. Fortunately for Naruto one of the swords man ran towards than the struggling ninja, arced his katana down and plunged it into the Ninja killing him.

The leader lowered his crossbow and walked towards Naruto. "You show quite a bit of promise my boy and you've seen what these people are like." He motioned to the two dead ninja "You know of the experiments they conduct. Would you join our cause, we need every able bodied man we can get."

"Who are you guys?"

"We are the former official and but now officially disbanded military of The land of Seas."


	3. The Land of Sea Needs Help

Tales of A rogue Jinchuuriki chapter 3

 **Authors note** , hey guys I'd actually abandoned writing this fanfiction for a while but I am back! Hurray! I for some reason have up on this story, I lost the motivation to do it because I thought it was bad. However, I decided to read over what I had written before, and I thought to myself "Gee this isn't as bad as I thought it was, maybe I'll continue onwards with it." And so here we are. I thoroughly enjoyed writing this chapter, and I look forward to your responses to it.

The man with the crossbow that saved Naruto's life was also the leader of the Land of Sea's military. Or to be more specific the officially disbanded military. His name was Hitode, he was a wall of muscular flesh, he was balding but made up for it with a well grown beard that framed his large lips. His voice was as deep and gruff as you'd expect it to be from his appearance.

Naruto was taken back to the military's base it was located on a gulley underneath a tall ledge. The camp was well organised and heavily guarded by swordsmen and bowmen alike but none of these men were trained in chakra manipulation. The base was also only recently built, as was evident by the fact that the walls were made of wood rather than stone. Naruto found out that the military had been evicted from their original military encampment as Hitode explained the political situation of the Land of Seas.

The land of Sea had its own military, but like the country which only had a population of about 250,000 people the military was always small. The land of sea also did not have its own Hidden Village or even Ninja clans so people skilled in the martial arts of the Chakra such as Ninjutsu or Genjutsu were rare. As a result of this the land of Sea allied itself with the Hidden Mist Village, Kirigakure and depended on them also for protection. The alliance however was at a cost, as the Land of Seas would have to supply monetary aid to the village as well as make a number of trade deals.

In recent years all of the shipments to Kirigakure were sabotaged, a Kaiju attacked and destroyed the ships and so Kirigakure stopped sending military aid. The military hired some shinobi to deal with the sea monster but they were all killed. On paper their deaths were classified as an animal attack. However, Hitode himself had seen some of the Shinobi's corpses, and their wounds did not look like they were inflicted by an animal. Hitode inquired about the suspicious nature of these men's deaths however any inquiry he had was formally rejected.

Because of the lack of aid from Kirigakure the military's resources were stretched thin. Pirates and bandits had to be dealt with without the aid of Ninja. This was highly problematic as many of these brigands were rogue ninja themselves. Hitode's men were brave warriors but they had no mastery of chakra manipulation, it would take ten of them to defeat a single ninja.

To make matters worse the feudal lord, his family, many members of the council and the royal guards were all assassinated. Hitode himself was attacked but managed to kill his assailant.

After this event the surviving members of the council held a meeting and deemed Hitode's military to be ineffective. In this time a man named Amachi joined the council, he was a scientist who was said he could bring back the country's former military security without the need for Hitode's military or aid from a Ninja village.

The military was outraged at the decision to be disbanded after all their brave service and sacrifice, this rage was viewed as insubordination and so Hitode and his men experienced first-hand what Amachi planned to replace them with. The military was attacked and driven out of its base by all sorts of horrors. Amachi had been creating mutants to be used as super soldiers, and had hired Rogue Ninja and other brigands. Hitode's men were no match for this army and so they were driven out of their base and retreated into the wilderness and made a new encampment.

Naruto stood upright, a wooden sword clasped in his hand, he swung the sword in an uppercut. Then swung it in a downwards arc. He tried side sweeps from both his left and right. Then he sheathed his sword, then unsheathed it in a forward lunge and then tried a couple more thrusts.

Hitode watched approvingly as Naruto practiced with the training sword. "Hmm your technique is not bad Naruto. You improve quite quickly. Could it be that you already have practice with the sword?"

Naruto sheathed his training sword and turned towards Hitode. "A bit." Naruto conceded.

"Reluctant to share your past eh?" Hitode inquired. Naruto just looked at him without saying anything. "Don't worry, your past is of no consequence to me so long as it stays within the past. Anyway it seems that we are all branded criminals in our own homes these days, you are an honourable sort of fellow, that much I can tell."

Naruto questioned whether Hitode was being genuine, it was clear to him that he wanted something from him and was using flattery to get his way. Still Hitode had clothed him, fed him, given him personal combat training and given him a place to sleep. Naruto being a man of principle wanted to pay the old man back in some way for this. Besides if he was to help Hitode out, Naruto knew that the old soldier would provide him with equipment. "What would you have me do?"

Hitode smiled, he had much respect for the perspicacious young man before him. "Straight to the point huh? Excellent." He rubbed his hands. "I have a plan to defeat Amachi and destroy his base completely, and with hopefully no bloodshed from our side. But in order for this plan to succeed we are going to need a certain piece of equipment, a bomb powerful enough to destroy their entire base. I made contact with some weapons dealers and arranged to buy a powerful incendiary device from them. However, I suspect that they are going to betray us, and even if they don't we do not have the money to buy this device. So we are going to have to pull a fast one on them. Two of my scouts have found the location of their ship."

Hitode handed Naruto a folded up map. "Travel to the location, marked here, there you will meet up with my scouts. They'll provide you more details on what to do, but basically I need you to sneak onto their ship somehow and steal the bomb and whatever other equipment you can and bring the bomb back to our base. Be careful though, I wouldn't be surprised if Amachi's forces were plotting with the smugglers."

"What if your men are not at this location? What if the mission fails?"

"If my men aren't there, I'll leave it up to you as to whether or not you want to complete the mission. If you feel like you need to return here, then do it. Then we can restrategize."

Naruto nodded.

"Go to the armoury, I have arranged for you to be provided with some supplies for the mission."

Naruto gave Hitode a salute and headed towards the armoury. He walked across the encampment looking around at the soldiers that resided there. They'd all been through tough times, betrayed by the very establishment they protected. Yet they all seemed to burn with an uneasy excitement. The soldier's reaction to him was mixed, some looked at him curiously, others completely ignored him and focused on their own duties.

The armoury was fairly makeshift. It was essentially a large tent stockpiled with various weapons. There was a bald man wearing a blacksmith's attire sitting at a grindstone sharpening some blades. He noticed Naruto standing before him and stopped his task.

Naruto scratched the back of his head. "I was told to get some equipment off of you."

The blacksmith looked him up and down. "Hmm, so you're Hitode's new protégé eh?" He got up off the grindstone and opened some of the chests pulling out a padded leather jacket. Naruto tried it on over the black linen shirt. It fitted Naruto reasonably well and offered decent enough protection. The blacksmith also threw a pair of greaves and a pair of bracers made from animal hide Naruto's way as well. Naruto put these on and looked down at his new light armour. It was not restrictive and would keep him from being grazed or bruised for the most part. The main weakness was that apart from his hide greaves and leather boots his legs had no protection, being covered only in a black linen pants. This didn't bother him much though, as he had I the past gotten into fights without any real armour at all.

"And now for your weapon." He reached into a chest and much to Naruto's surprise the sword he took out was not a katana but a western style sword. He handed Naruto the sword sheathed in its hilt. "We don't have many weapons to spare. This was taken from a pirate that we killed, he probably got it from the west somewhere.

Naruto unsheathed the blade, it was a Messer sword. The blade was broad and mostly straight but curved into a hook at its end. It also had a cross guard. Naruto held it and gently swung it about getting a feel for his new weapon. It was slightly top heavy, but that meant it would have more striking power. He smiled and nodded at the blacksmith.

The blacksmith smiled. "I see you are getting attached to it. Wield it with honour." He placed his hand on Naruto's shoulder. "Good luck on your mission."

Naruto thanked the blacksmith, grabbed some other supplies that he needed and left the military camp. The fact that he was being sent out on this mission alone made him think of how hard pressed Hitode was. He placed his hand on the new sword in his hilt and felt a touch of excitement as he set off through the woods guided only by the map Hitode had given to him, landmarks and a compass.

The land that surrounded the military base was a wet deciduous forest. Much to Naruto's dismay not long after his journey started it began to rain heavily. This was not surprising as the nearby wind would blow over the sea. Naruto simply gritted his teeth and did his best to ignore the damp. In order to prevent himself from getting too cold he started to jog lightly, taking care not to trip over roots or rocks. Time began to pass by him at an unknown rate, the forest floor was dark because it was overshadowed by the canopy and so the time of day was not apparent to him.

His thoughts went to his current situation. He'd left the hidden leaf village to find a better life and yet here he was running through the forest in the pouring rain to fight against a more powerful enemy than himself. He was fifteen years old. Most people his age would be living peacefully working on a farm, learning a trade or pursuing academia, perhaps being sweet on a girl. That kind of life it seemed was not meant for Naruto. He didn't even really know if he wanted that kind of life. He was raised in Konohagakure. A military Organisation composed of a number of warrior tribes that Served the Land of Fire's Feudal lord and trained from a very young age to be a warrior. He'd always thought that he'd want to escape the fighting life, and so he ran away from home. However, ever since he ran away he'd always lived his life on the edge, and here he was now, fighting in a conflict that he had no part in causing and no real connection to. It's not like the Land of Seas was his home or anything. He could always just move away. The only reason he had come here was to rescue Inari, and as far as he knew Inari was dead. It's not like he had any obligation to help him anyway. However, there was a fire burning inside of Naruto, a shiver of anticipation flowed through him at the thought of engaging in combat.

'What am I even fighting for' Naruto wondered. 'What am I alive for, where is the purpose in my life. Where is the meaning?'

The answer that was given to him as a child was that his purpose was to fight for Konohagakure. But he didn't belong there, the villagers had made sure of that. He thought of what other sources of meaning and purpose were in people's lives, but none of those other sources were available to Naruto. He had no family. No friends. Nothing.

As Naruto thought of this he saw that he was near the forest edge. It had stopped raining, the trees began to clear and a salty wind blew in his face. The sky though still quite cloudy seemed very bright. He walked out of the edge of the forest to an area of farmland near a raised coastline. He looked around and saw sparsely distributed old abandoned stone brick houses and the fields left untended to, probably for around a hundred years. He walked over to the cliff edge, as he wanted to get a view of the ocean. As he walked over, he stumbled upon something in the grass. He went to looka t what is was that he had stumbled upon and saw that it was a skull, with a very old and rusty kunai jammed into its forehead. He paused for a second and looked around to see that there were bones scattered all around him. It was an old battlefield, which Naruto figured was probably from one of the great ninja wars. He continued over to the cliff edge. There was a fantastic view of the ocean. It reminded him of the first time he saw the ocean. It was a hard point in his life, just a couple months after he'd gone rogue. He hadn't eaten for days and was tired and feeling week. But the splendour of the ocean, as it glittered in the sunlight made him forget about all his problems for a short while. He looked down, the cliffs loomed some 20 metres over the ocean which crashed violently against jagged rocks making a loud crashing sound. Naruto sat down at the cliff edge and took from his pocket some salted meat and bread which he ate with relish. The meat was tasty but in small supply, and the bread was stale. He hardly expected the dishonoured Land of Seas military to have fresh bread though. After he'd finished his food, he washed it down with some fresh water from his canteen that he carried.

Staring out at a view was often a good time to think, and Naruto returned to his previous thoughts. "What is it that I am alive for?" He asked himself aloud. "I left the village because I wanted to get away from being hated, but now that I am free I am just all alone." He continued voice his thoughts out aloud. "And being alone is terrible in its own way too."

Naruto looked down to the jagged rocks beneath and thought of jumping onto them. How he could obliterate himself and end his strife with one last final act of self-loathing.

But he also remembered how some of the villagers had told "do the world a favour and get rid of yourself".

"No that would be playing right into their hands!" Naruto clasped the ground around him angrily. "No I can't let those assholes win!"

Suddenly to the blonde's immense fright a gust of wind blew up from the cliffs and pulled him off the ledge. Naruto gave a frightened shout and his mind was taken over with the intense will to survive. His hands latched out feverishly for anything to hold onto, and he managed to grab hold of a root that suck out of the cliff face. Still in his flight or fight state of mind, Naruto scrambled to climb up the root and the remainder of the cliff face, adrenaline pumping through his body. He clambered over the edge of the cliff and got up stumbling away from the cliff edge. He only stopped when he was a good five metres away from the edge. He allowed himself to rest face down on the ground while his heartbeat slowly went down to normal, then got up and looked at his surroundings for enemies. There was nobody there, just some seagulls flying about around their nests.

"I came all this way to save Inari." Naruto spoke aloud to himself. "But he's probably dead now." He recalled the chain wielding Ninja's words. But then again, Naruto thought, that Ninja could be lying to demoralize him. "No, I won't believe it unless I see his corpse! And if he is dead then he deserves a proper burial."

Then Naruto thought of Isaribi, he recalled how she had not wanted to hurt those villagers and yet the black clad Ninjas had forced her hand, even though she was crying. She was in his estimation clearly being used by the followers of Amachi. Her ability to transform into a bestial form explained why all the people of the Land of Seas hated her. It was because she wasn't human. But in Naruto's eyes that made her just like him, as he was certain that the villagers of Konoha didn't saw him in the same light as Isaribi's countrymen saw her. "I think I'm beginning to get an idea of what purpose I might have." He spoke aloud.

"Alright!" He drew his sword and marched forward.

It only took a short while to locate Hitode's men's hideout. It was located in an old abandoned house which had a number of trees growing out from behind it's crumbling walls. When he entered the hideout, sword in hand and alert of his surroundings he found nobody there, and the whole place was trashed. He also detected a carefully hidden tripwire, which he disabled with care. "Seems, they were expecting somebody to come here. I'd better be alert."

He gripped his sword tightly and continued on his path to where the weapons dealers ship was located. After travelling along high coastline for some time the elevation of his path began to fall and he managed to make his way to a small and empty bay where a sizeable wooden fishing boat painted in red lay waiting for him. He did not approach it directly, as his orders were to steal the explosive device contained inside it. Hitode had chosen a very good candidate for the mission, as stealth was one of Naruto's specialties. As a child he had learned how to go about undetected, to keep by the shadows and hide away from prying eyes. In Konoha, there had been people who tried to harass him and even kill him. He also took joy as a young boy in pulling pranks on people to get their attention. He crept along the cliff face behind large stones so that any potential watchful crewman would not notice him. Unfortunately for Naruto he couldn't simply walk up to the ship or he would be detected, so he climbed down along a 5 metre cliff face, at the edge of the bay creeping along jagged rocks. His intention was to swim over to the ship and climb up the anchor onboard. He began to think of where on the ship, the bomb might be kept. Hitode had told him that it would most likely be a guarded storeroom.

His thoughts were interrupted by something that would be impossible to believe unless you were to see it yourself. A gigantic water formation rose up from the sea, draining all the water from the bay. It was light blue in colour and had a number of spots that seemed to resemble a face. It grew an aqueous hand from its body which it used to crash down on the ship. The blood curdling screams of the crewmen who were smitten alive emanated from the broken ship. But only a split second later a massive explosion took place. Steam gushed into the air all around and Naruto collapsed to the ground clutching his ears in pain, which rang loudly.

He knew now would be the perfect time for an enemy to strike, and so he quickly roused himself to his feet and drew his sword. He could still hear nothing but saw coming through the mist two projectile shuriken that were thrown his way. He deflected one and dodged the other.

The steam began to pace away and Naruto's hearing slowly returned to normal. As the mist cleared away Naruto saw two bespectacled Ninjas facing him. Both were in their mid-twenties, one was a lithe looking man who wore black attire and had shortly cut dark brown hair. The other, who had shoulder length black hair, wore a simple shirt, pants and sandals with the sleeves rolled up to show his ample arm muscles.

The muscular man spoke up. "So that is what Amachi's men were planning eh? A bomb. It even destroyed our Umibozu. we'll have to make another. I have to give him credit and I have to give you credit too kiddo, you are hard to kill. Two times now, you've escaped death from us. Three if you count the Shuriken. But we were only testing your awareness that time."

His accomplice added, "I thought I had drowned you when you approached the island on that tiny raft. And then when you had shown your face near Isaribi's house I was so surprised, and then we sent the demon brothers after you, I thought you'd be dead then for sure."

The muscular man laughed. "You really did them in. Their corpses looked quite brutal. Such fine handiwork indeed hahaha!" He gave a sadistic smile. "Tell ya what kiddo, you've impressed us so much that we'll tell you are names. I am Yoroi."

"And I am Misumi." Misumi, extended his arm with his palm out flat in a welcoming gesture. "What is your name."

"Why do you want to know my name?" Naruto asked, but then after a moment's thought he changed his question, "What use could you have for it?"

"Hmm that question makes me wonder if you are a rogue Ninja?" Misumi said. "So are we, in fact we used to come from Konohagakure."

Naruto's eyes widened at this revelation.

Yoroi was quick to take notice of Naruto's surprise, he knew how to read faces very well. "Surprised?" He stared harder at the boy and his own eyes would have betrayed to Naruto surprise as well, had they not been hiding underneath his dark glasses. "Misumi, I think I know why you had such trouble killing this kid?"

"Huh? Why?"

"He comes from Konoha aswell. He's the Jinchuuriki child. You remember him?"

Misumi's moth dropped agape. Then he twisted his lips into a crooked frown. "The leaf made a Jinchuuriki? I didn't know that." The astonishment was evident in his voice.

"Oh they did. They kept it a secret though, made a law saying that you couldn't talk about it aloud. So that's probably why you never knew."

"My love." Misumi spoke solemnly. "That's when she died. The kyuubi killed her…"

Naruto listened intently to the discussion of Yoroi and Misumi. For he knew it was revealing to him some great truth that was concealed in his life. He knew of some law pertaining to him. He knew that the villagers had hated him for some reason for hating him. And the aura of disgust that Misumi gave off, was the same aura that Naruto had sensed from the villagers of Konoha. Misumis gaze pierced Naruto's core in the same way that the villagers gazes did. He recalled one lonely moment from his childhood, that constantly reoccurred to him. He was six years of age, it was late autumn, the sun was setting and the Ninja academy was finishing up for the day. Many parents had come to collect their children, and one by one they all looked at Naruto in disgust. Many of them gathered round and continued to stare at him. Naruto had begun to cry, and yet they didn't stop. It was a moment in his life where he'd never felt more alone.

From what Yoroi and misumi was saying, he was somehow connected to the Kyuubi. Something that he'd suspected, but was now confirmed from their conversation with him. And the word Jinchuuriki, Naruto didn't know what it meant, but he had some idea. It was a label applied to him, the label that divided him from others. That much was self-evident.

"Please explain to me what the word Jinchuuriki means. For I am not sure what it means."

"Liar!" Isumi screeched. "I'll Kill You! I'll tear you apart! Limb from limb, I'll disembowel you! I'll cause you so much pain that I wish you were never born you miserable creature."

"Woah! Calm down there Isumi. We have to be careful here!"

"Shut up Yoroi!"

Misumi's hatred was like that of the villagers, and it awakened in Naruto his own hatred. Unbeknownst to him, but not to his enemies Naruto's eyes had turned red, and his pupils took a slit shape. Naruto charged forward. His sword in his hand was an extension of his body, which he would use to exact his anger upon his foe. His step was quicker than usual. So quick that it took Misumi by surprise. Naruto roared. His bellow was louder than that of a lion. It was almost as ear wrenching as the explosion earlier. And he cleaved off Misumi's head.

Yoroi, upon seeing this jumped back away from his adversary. "Wow! You really are a monster!" His voice showed some small amount of fear. He clasped his hands together shouted "Teleportation justsu!" and disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

Naruto, was left alone with his thoughts. The waves of the sea crashed against the rocks beside him. His ears still rang to some degree. And his mind was reeling.

 **A/N** This is the end of another chapter. I will have the next instalment completed in a shorter time than it took me to write this.

I began almost immediately after I finished chapter 2, Then I worked on this on and off for a few weeks before giving up. After which it took me months before I found the motivation to continue this story again, and once I found that motivation it only took me a week to finish this chapter.


	4. Two Comrades in Arms

**A/N: Sorry this took a while. I had exams and work and general procrastination factors into things.**

 **At some point I might try to translate what I've written into French. Anyway thanks for reading this far, the next chapter or two will conclude this ark.**

Chapter 4 Rescue

It took a while for Naruto to calm down from his realisation that he was somehow connected to the nine tailed fox. Maybe he was the Nine tailed fox, maybe he drew his life from it. He did not know. But he did know there was some connection there. Yoroi had called him a Jinchuurik, if he could find out what that word meant he would finally get the full picture.

It made sense that there would be a connection between him and the Kyuubi, he was born on the same day that it had attacked the village. And where did it come from? That answer was known among the adults of the village but it was not allowed to be spoken about.

He was now closer to the truth than he'd ever been before, but there was another task at hand.

He could no longer retrieve the explosive weapon since it had already been detonated, so he simply decided to return to the headquarters. But first he had to look for Hitode's scouts. It took him only a short while to find them. He did this by travelling back to their encampment in the old abandoned house and following the trail that their captors had left behind. They weren't very careful about covering their tracks probably since they weren't expecting somebody to come after them. Following imprints in the grass here and there, broken twigs and bits of dirt kicked up Naruto was able to track the location of Hitode's men to a small cave hidden on a rocky outcrop in the woodland. He drew his sword and approached it cautiously and silently. He listened to his surroundings. A robin somewhere behind him gave a warning call, a single high pitched "Kee".

In Naruto's mind this was either because of his presence, or perhaps the presence of somebody behind him. He turned around and sure enough three men wearing grey ninja attire stood below, they had attempted to ambush him.

One of the men, armed with a crossbow shot it in Naruto's direction, he ducked down to the ground and the bolt flew a mere inch over Naruto's head and burrowed itself into the ground behind him with a soft thudding sound. Naruto scrambled quickly to his feet and ran towards the trio sword in hand. The two other Ninja, who were katana wielders charged towards him. The first of the two Katana wielders raised their sword to strike down on Naruto, but Naruto dodged the strike and jumped past him. He deflected a strike from the second katana wielder and knocked him back as he picked up his pace and sprinted towards to marksman.

The marksman did not have time to reload his crossbow and gave a cry of terror as Naruto struck him down. Naruto turned rapidly around to face his enemies who were charging towards him. They swung their swords quickly. But Naruto was quicker then they. And before long his enemies lay dead on the ground.

After wiping the blood off of his face and his sword Naruto turned his attention to the cave. He headed towards it briskly. As he climbed in he saw two men wearing the same Land of Seas guard uniform that Hitode had worn. They were hunched down and tied up with their mouths covered. They looked at Naruto with uncertainty in their eyes. Much to their relief Naruto cut them free with a knife that he had picked up.

"I'm on your side." Naruto informed them. "Hitode saved my life and I owe him one. He asked me to come and check up on you guys."

The two men got up and dusted themselves off. One was bald, shaven and middle aged and had brown eyes, the other was in his mid-twenties and had tousled hair and a stubbly beard and was blonde and blue eyes like Naruto.

"There are three guys that are guarding us, watch out!" The blonde scout spoke with urgency.

"Already killed them. Anyway we need to get back to the base."

Both of the two men looked at each other in astonishment and then back to Naruto.

The blonde warrior spoke to Naruto as he stretched his body which was aching from being tied up in an uncomfortable position for so long. "Thanks for saving us kid, you don't look that old yet you must be an amazing fighter. I think Hitode found an excellent man in you. What is your name? I'm Sijbrand." His accent indicated that he was not a native of the land but from somewhere to the West.

"And I'm Enba." Spoke his elder.

"My name is Naruto."

The three men shook hands with one another then stepped out of the cave. Sijbrand and Enba squinted their eyes in the sunlight.

"Did you retrieve the bomb from the pirates? Or has somebody else done that?" Enba asked.

"Yeah, about that." Naruto sighed. "The bomb detonated when some giant water monster attacked the pirate ship."

"The Umibōzu." Sijbrand interjected. "Damn thing is bloody indestructible", his fists clenched and his voice quivered "it destroyed my father's ship and killed some of my family members."

"Well," Naruto replied as he patted Sijbrand on the back, "the bomb detonated an killed the thing, along with all of the pirates."

"Really?" The two spoke in unison. In particular Sijbrand sounded happy to hear this.

"If it killed the Umibozu, then all is not lost." Mused Enba as he stroked his chin. He smiled nervously and his eyes widened with excitement. "It would make an assault by sea on demon Island possible. We should take advantage of this opportunity before they manage to make another one of those things. Come let us get back to the base time is of the essence!"

After retrieving some of Enba and Sijbrand's equipment, including Enba's katana and Sijbrand's war-axe, as well as collecting weapons from the enemies that Naruto slew the trio began the journey back to the main base. They hiked through the forest rather than running like Naruto had earlier as they were tired, and were carrying a lot of equipment and did not want to risk injury. There were many paths through the forest some long and some short. And many were more dangerous than others, incidentally the path that Naruto took, while being the quickest was also one of the most dangerous as it went right through the territory of a pack of wolves.

They took a path which was close to the shoreline that was less grim and dark than the way Naruto had chosen earlier, it would take longer as it went around the outskirts of the forest rather than through it, all in all it would take a day and a half to get to the barracks.

Evening came all too quickly and they had to make camp before it got too dark. They set down their apparel in a former beach that had been raised above the ocean by isostatic change starting thousands of years prior. The flat, soft and sandy grown covered in grass was ideal for setting up camp.

By the time the campfire was lit and the tents were up, the sun had already begun to set. They went hungry that night, only a few morsels of bread and strips of dried meat were in the food bags, and it was too late to go hunting. So they sat by the fire, ate what little food they had and attempted to distract themselves from the groaning of their stomachs. By watching the firelight and warming their hands.

"Don't take this as me doubting your devotion to our cause, Naruto." Spoke Enba cautiously. "You have proven yourself to be both loyal and brave. But I am curious as to why it is that you are fighting with us against Amachi?"

"Well, Hitode saved my life and I owe him one. Also I believe a friend of mine was captured and taken to Amachi. I want to rescue him if he is alive, or at the very least avenge him if he is dead."

"I see, I am sorry to hear about your friend." Enba shook his head. "I don't know exactly what Amachi and his ilk have been doing to the people they captured, but it involves some nasty human experimentation."

Sijbrand turned to face Enba. "None of us know." He then wiped his brown and faced the ground. " I guess we'll find out."

"Human experimentation." Naruto murmered to himself. "I wonder if this Amachi person has any connection to some Ninja village."

Enba looked at Naruto with a curious expression. "I suppose it's possible, but what makes you say that?"

"Ninja villages…" Sijbrand mused. "What are they exactly? Is that what you call mercenary bands or Military barracks or Holy Orders or something? I know a Ninja is a type of warrior you have here like our Knights."

"Ninjas are warriors who master the art of weaponizing chakra." Naruto explained.

"Most ninjas belong to warrior clans." Enba explained to Sijbrand. "In the past these clans acted as mercenaries for the political elite in their wars. At one point two clans, the Senju and the Uchiha united to form a the first Ninja village, Konohagakure. And these ninja villages work as self-governing state dependencies for their respective country. For example the Konohagakure, also called the Hidden-Leaf village works for The land of Fire, Hi no Kuni.

Some Ninjas are like mercenaries, they act entirely solo and don't belong to a clan or organisation. Some don't belong to a clan and just work for the state military. Some Ninja clans are independent, and continue the old ways of working as mercenaries. Some Ninja clans work directly in state militaries and not for a hidden village."

"There are also rogue Ninjas, who leave their Ninja village and strike out on their own." Naruto added.

"Hmmm. Very interesting. Does this country have Ninjas?"

"We don't have any Ninja village here. And any Ninja clan that used to live here joined Kirigakure. Though there are rogue ninjas here, and I'm sure Amachi has hired mercenary Ninjas."

"Yeah, the guys who Hitode rescued me from were Ninjas." Naruto explained. "I distracted them and Hitode got em' with a crossbow. Plus there are the two guys I came across when the Umibozu blew up the pirate ship. One of them is still alive."

"You killed one of them!?" Enba asked in shock.

Naruto nodded.

"That's…. impressive. No normal person can kill a Ninja, you must have had training in chakra manipulation so?"

Enba's question made Naruto uncomfortable as he did not want to reveal too much about his past. Though at the same time if he being seen to hide his past, he might be regarded as suspicious. So Naruto nodded. "Yes, I received some training from my guardians that I grew up with, not much though as I ran away from home before I could learn very much. I'm mostly self-taught."

Enba smiled warmly. "Well I'm glad you are on our side."

"If I may ask." Naruto responded. "Why are you guys fighting?"

Enba and Sijbrand looked at each other trying to figure out which would respond first. Sijbrand was leaning forward seemingly eager to answer the question. And so the two wordlessly agreed that Sijbrand would respond first.

"As you can tell, I'm actually not from The land of Sea. I'm a man of the far west. My family are merchants. My father and I came here with our crew to deliver goods from our continent, like wine for example. Our commodities are very popular here in the east, especially the wine." He boasted proudly. "Anyway," he continued his face now sullen, "the Umibozu destroyed our ship and killed my father. I can't go home now, not without avenging my father. It wasn't long before I found myself within the ranks of the military, I also see how my fellow men of the sea here have suffered too." He gripped his war-axe and stared off angrily into the fire without making any eye contact with Naruto or Enba. "This axe belonged to my father, I will use it to avenge him." He let out a harsh sigh, his eyes slightly teary. "I'm gonna strike that bastard down."

"You are not the only one who wants to do that." Enba interjected. "I want to do it as well." He shook his head and looked at Naruto. "I fight for my country. It's that simple. I grew up in this land, and I will die in this land. It is my homeland. I don't want to see it go to hell, and I'd gladly lay down my life if it helped to stop that."

Enba's statement had made Naruto think about his own birthplace. He didn't have any sense of National identity at all, and so couldn't relate to Enba. He came from Konoha, but the way that the people of that village treated him made him feel like they were not worth fighting for, and that he did not belong among them. As far as he was concerned he was an outsider to the village. So he could not relate to Enba's feelings much at all, as he had not any place to call a homeland. Though that didn't stop Naruto from desiring a sense of identity, so on some level he could understand Enba's convictions, and he respected them all the same. He made a mental note to himself that he would try to find out where his ancestors came from.

"Where is your homeland?" Enba asked Naruto.

Naruto shook his head. "I don't know who my ancestors are, or where they came from. I want to find out though. The answer to your question is something I want to seek out."

"What about where you grew up?" Enba queried suspiciously with one eyebrow raised.

Naruto's voice was heavy with emotion. "I could hardly call that place a home."

Enba stared at Naruto intently thinking over what he had said. "So you are a rogue Ninja then?" He asked cautiously.

Naruto was silent, he was exposed and did not know what to say.

Sijbrand looked shocked. "Really?" He exclaimed half excitedly. He turned to Naruto. "Is it true."

At this point Naruto figured it would be best not to lie, but also not to reveal too much about himself. "You're right Enba, half right at least. I left the village before I became a full-fledged Genin though. I ran away because I was a slave to them, and I did not want to serve a bunch of people who didn't give a rats ass about me."

Enba looked relieved to hear Naruto's response. "I believe you. By the look in your eyes I can tell you aren't lying. Your past is of no consequence to me Naruto. So don't worry. And neither Sijbrand or I will tell anyone either."

"Tell anyone what?" Sijbrand added with a wink.

"Good." Naruto replied. Also relieved.

"I was concerned you would be a spy see." Enba explained. "But now I know you are not."

Sijbrand yawned loudly, changing to topic of conversation. "I'm tired. I think I'll go to sleep."

"I'm tired also." Enba replied. He turned to face Naruto. "You don't mind taking up watch for the first two hours do you?" He asked this of Naruto partially to show his trust and also partially because he wanted to sleep himself.

Naruto shook his head, "not at all."

"Cheers, Naruto." Thanked Sijbrand.

Enba went to his sleeping bag and sijbrand knelt down on his knees, he touched his forehead chest and two shoulders and clasped his hands together, he mumbled a few prayers before making the same religious hand signs that Naruto did not recognise and then snuggling into his sleeping bag. Before long both were snoring loudly.

Naruto started the timer on a digital watch that belonged to Sijbrand, he couldn't understand much of the writing that was on the object, but was able to read the digital numerals on the watch as Sijbrand had translated them into Naruto's language.

He was roused from his fascination with the watch by a rustling noise deep within in the bushes. Naruto reached for his sword and got up off the log he was sitting on. It was very dark, but not yet pitch black and so Naruto was able to make out a figure in the distance, it looked like a woman and it looked familiar. As silently as a barn owl he made his way through the bushes, in his mind he debated whether or not he should wake up his companions, however if they saw Isaribi, they'd likely want to kill her. And since Naruto wanted to talk to her he decided it'd be best if they'd stayed asleep. Eventually he came out to a pebble filled raised beach where Isaribi was. She had transformed into her Kaiju form, ready to head back into the but then she noticed Naruto. She stood in shock not knowing what to do, and somewhat concerned by the drawn sword in Naruto' hand.

Naruto sheathed his sword much to Isaribi's relief. He frowned. "What have they done to you?"

Isaribi who was trying to remain calm was now struggling to hold back tears, she wiped her eyes with her wrist. "This is what I am. I am a monster. This is why the people of my country hate me."

"I've seen monsters." Naruto spoke solemnly and truthfully. "Oh I've seen terrible monsters, but none of them look disfigured or bestial. They are like normal people. You are not like them. And while some people may wrongfully hate you, I don't."

The words rang in Isaribi's ears, her breath was shallow. Her mind was a mess of conflicting emotions. "L-liar."

Naruto shook his head. "I'm not lying. Why are you fighting on Amachi's side, do they hold somebody hostage?"

Isaribi gulped a harsh breath of air. "He promised to fix me."

"How do you know he's telling the truth?"

Isaribi fell to her knees. "Stop it! It's my only hope. No matter where I go I'll never be accepted. Not if I'm like this."

Naruto walked towards her. "You might not believe it, but I know exactly what you are going through. You and I are the same." When he stood just in front of her, he got down on one knee and placed he calloused hands on her cheek, wiping away a tear with his thumb. "Fighting for Amachi will not solve anything!"

Suddenly and without warning Isaribi grabbed Naruto by the neck and held him up in the air. He gasped for breath but couldn't find it, helplessly he clawed at her webbed hands but couldn't release her grip. After twenty seconds Naruto felt like he was about to go unconscious Isaribi threw him a few feet back into the beach. Naruto coughed and breathed in desperate gasps for air, it took him a few seconds to right himself. When he turned to the ocean Isaribi was gone, leaving only a few ripples from where she had jumped in. He let out a sigh and headed back to the camp.


	5. Into Battle We Go!

**Authors note**

 **Greetings dear readers. It's been a while, hasn't it. I apologise for the long delay, I only intended it to be a few weeks. As soon as I had uploaded the previous chapter I began working on this chapter, but then for a few weeks I stopped writing. A work week consisting of more than 40, and sometimes 50 hours is really taxing, and procrastination when it comes to my writing duties also doesn't help. It's a lot easier to play a video game than to write, though writing is far more gratifying in the long term. Thirdly I have also began writing my own original story as well, (which I ended up giving up on for numerous reasons, though I will try again with a different idea), which distracted me from the task of finishing this chapter. But here it is at long last anyway.**

 **Also in the previous chapter I mentioned the character Sijbrand as coming from the west. He is Dutch, because in Edo Japan, Dutch traders often came to the region and were the most common Europeans there and the Narutoverse is very Japanese inspired (obviously). But in the Naruto verse, the equivalent of Europe (Temujin's continent) is in the south, so Sijbrand is actually from the south not the west in this story. I haven't begun translating this fanfiction into French yet, but I still intend to.**

After the altercation with Isaribi, the night went by quickly for Naruto, and without incident. Naruto returned to his two comrades, who were still sound asleep and unharmed, and he sat by the fire, warming himself but maintaining awareness of his surroundings. When it was time, he woke Sijbrand who took the next shift of the night watch.

Naruto, Enba and Sijbrand arose early the next morning and left at the crack of dawn, they all felt very groggy but they knew that they had to get back home as quickly as possible, and that sense of urgency guided them through that hardest part of the morning, where the reluctance to rise and move about was at its height.

They travelled through the deep forest silently, talking infrequently, and only in whispers so that they would not be too easy to find. They were afraid of both assailants and animals. Their silence was echoed by the eerie quiet of the dark and deep forest around them. However for the vast majority of their escapade through the woods, nothing had happened, yet they still felt as though they were being watched.

Then when the trio were nearing the edge of the deep forest and were about to cross into more open woodland, they came. A dozen wolves. Their fur was light brown and their snouts were elongated, these wolves were a unique species to Umi no Kuni. They snarled and howled and showed their jagged teeth while they circled aggressively around the trio, who subsequently drew their weapons.

"Fuck, they waited until we thought we were safe!" Cursed Enba.

Sijbrand's response was different, it contained uneasy excitement. "Wow, actual wolves! My country has too many people for them to live there, though they used to. I've never seen any before!"

"Now is not the time to be impressed!" Enba barked angrily. "These animals are seriously dangerous! We've invaded their territory, and they don't take that lightly."

"How will we get out of this?" Naruto questioned loudly.

"We'll form a defensive formation and continue on our path. That's, all we can do… Sijbrand, you and I will go behind, Naruto you go in front!"

Just after the humans had assumed their positions two young wolves, looking to prove themselves to the pack, made the first brave dash. They ran around Naruto towards Sijbrand and Enba, but then jumped back. The attack was a feint. Snarling at the axeman and the swordsman they proceeded to make their way back to the front and attempted to take Naruto from two sides, but Enba positioned himself alongside Naruto, and so the wolf at Enba's side moved to the other wolf and they both made a mad rush, hoping together that they could overpower the blonde.

But just as they were within striking distance, they stopped abruptly, which was much to the surprise of the trio, and the wolf pack. A wolf's senses are powerful and keen, and wolves can see many things than men cannot. The two younglings sensed something in Naruto that disturbed them greatly. They hesitated and stepped backwards, their tails in between their legs in a sign of submission.

The other wolves looked confused, and some of them approached Naruto aggressively but also gauging him, as they were not too sure what provoked the youngsters reaction.

The two young wolves, gave a warning bark to the rest of the group and ran to the back of the pack.

Enba looked to Naruto and perceptively asked "are they afraid of you?"

By the time Enba had spoken, the whole group of wolves looked unsettled, as they had all sensed what the young wolves had warned them of. The only wolves that were not scared were the Alpha male and his second in command. The alpha of the pack was bigger than the rest and had old scars across his body, a testament to his many victories. As he approached Naruto his tail was held high, and he wagged it likely. His second in command walked behind him diagonally behind to the left. Unlike the alpha who seemed relaxed, the loyal beta wolf assumed an aggressive and protective stance.

The alpha male stopped and stared at Naruto directly in the eye and assessed him. He gave a sneeze from his long snout. He sniffed twice. Then turned and lifted up his right foot, pointing in the direction that the trio were going. He then turned around walking into the deep woodland calmly. The rest of his pack soon followed.

Enba was the first to break the brief moment of silence that ensued. "What did you do Naruto."

Naruto shrugged his soldiers.

"My grandfather always said that wolves were intelligent creatures, that they can see things which people normally cant." Sijbrand explained. "Perhaps they saw something in you Naruto."

"It did look like that." Naruto spoke aloud, but to himself more than to Sijbrand or Enba."

"Whatever it was we should be grateful for it. But we must continue onwards!" Enba hurried the other two to pick up their pace.

By two hours past noon Naruto, Enba and Sijbrand had arrived at the staked wooden walls of the military base.

The man at the gate let them in, there was a depressed air about the place. As Naruto looked around he saw that one of the wooden part of the wall had been badly damaged, and he had also noticed before entering, that there were ten new mounds in the ground where before there were none.

"Hitode won't be too happy about the news." Naruto spoke worriedly, "I also hope this doesn't hurt the morale of our comrades."

"Don't worry." Enba spoke solemnly. "These kinds of attacks happen often, we here in Umi no Kuni are strong. We'll pick ourselves up."

"And Hitode is one hell of a motivational speaker." Added Sijbrand. "Ah there he is."

Hitode came striding out of his tent towards the trio. He saluted them, and they responded in kind. "I am glad to see that you are all alive," he spoke in his gruff voice, anger was evident in his tone. "However, I don't see the explosive device with you. Explain yourselves!"

Naruto stepped forward, "When I arrived at the ship, there was some monster called the Umibōzu there, and it destroyed the ship and the explosive device with it.

Hitode sighed disappointedly "I see."

"However…"

Hitode's eyes perked up. "Yes?"

"The creature itself was destroyed."

"So what? They probably have a million of those creatures by now! Dammit, we'll have to wait a while longer before making our final assault!"

Sijrband stepped in. "Actually sir, according to some documents Enba and I managed to steal, that is not the case. It takes quite some time for them to develop an Umibozu. About a year."

Hitode paused in thought for a moment. He muttered to himself. "Yes. Yes. Maybe we can manage it." He cleared his throat. "Sijbrand, Enba come to my tent, tell the captains and I the information that you have received."

"Yes sir!"

"Yes sir!"

"Naruto, you have done well." Hitode walked over to the blonde and patted him on the shoulder. "Go rest eat and drink."

Hitode turned to face his ragged yet resilient men. "My brothers! The time to take back our land is nigh!"

All of a sudden the atmosphere in the barracks changed, to a tense yet hopeful one. A great cheer erupted from the men.

I will make an announcement soon!" He beat the left side of his chest with his right fist twice. "Stay strong!"

Naruto's thoughts went to his stomach, he hadn't eaten properly in a while and he was famished. He followed the smell of food to the chef's quarters, where a couple men were eating quietly.

"How goes it." Naruto saluted the chef. He was burly man with brown hair, he wore a typical chef's attire and but his sleeves were rolled up showing dragon tattoos.

"Whattaya want kid." The chef's tone was quite hostile. He didn't want to be bothered making yet another dinner for somebody.

"Isn't that obvious."

"Listen kid go off and make yourself useful, there's men that are far more deserving of the food than you!"

"Just give me my fucking dinner."

The chef laughed. "Is it all right with spit in it?"

Naruto shook his head. "What did I do to you."

"You bothered me. That's what you did."

Naruto sighed. "I don't have patience for this." He walked over to the kitchen equipment and grabbed a ladle and a bowl he set the bowl down near a pot of venison stew.

The chef stared at him angrily but did nothing as Naruto helped himself to a decent portion of the stew, and grabbed himself two slices of freshly baked brown bread.

He sat himself down and ate his food in silence, For a brief moment he considered approaching the few soldiers who were eating nearby but approaching people wasn't something he was used to doing. _'Even though that chef was a real piece of work, the stew isn't bad._ ' Naruto thought to himself as he finished it off. He left his dishes on the table he sat at and walked elsewhere. He had some time to kill, and had nothing to do. He considered going to sleep, as he hadn't had a full night's sleep the other day. However the sun was quite bright and he was somewhat concerned that somebody could ambush him in his sleep. It was still quite possible that some of his old adversaries from Konohagakure could be hiding among Hitode's brave band of men.

Naruto climbed up the ladder behind the walls of the fort, and peered out into the distance. The land that surrounded him was beautiful in the afternoon sunlight, that drenched the fields which surrounded him giving them a golden sheen. He could feel some sense of the awe the men around him had for their land. "It must be nice to have a nation to fight for." Naruto spoke aloud to himself.

"ATTENTION!"

Naruto's thoughts were interrupted by the cry of one of Hitode's officers, he turned to see that Hitode and his captains had emerged from their tent, all of the soldiers were gathering round them with looks of anticipation on their faces.

Naruto noticed one soldier standing in the corner, with dark hair and eyes, he looked to be about in his twenties, and was very unassuming looking except for the fact that he was staring not at Hitode but directly at Naruto. Naruto returned the mysterious man's stare and they each paused and watched each other suspiciously.

Hitode began his speech. He stood upright and looked approvingly upon his men, who in turn looked back at him with eager anticipation and in hope.

As he began to talk there was sadness in his eyes, his voice was heavy with emotion and he choked upon the first of his words. "I know that these past few months have been difficult. Our leaders, whom we trusted with our country's governance, have betrayed us. We thought that they were loyal to our cause, to our nation and to our children, but they proved us wrong!"

The sadness in his voice turned quickly to anger. "They sold us out so that they could have power! They wanted genetically modified soldiers, that aren't even human! It seems that to them, we were nothing but tools, pawns, economic units, and we were no longer good enough for them. We have watched our families being captured! Enslaved! Slaughtered! Our homeland taken from us! Any of our former elite that stayed loyal to us, they have been killed. Or they are here with us now." He gestured to one of his captains, who was a lower down member of the Umi no Kuni's royal Dynasty.

"But not all is lost, for we all are still here! And we will fight to the end, be it bitter or sweet. We will not rest! We will not slacken! We will not give in! We will struggle endlessly! For our cause is righteous, it is true! It is the cause of our homeland! The cause of our ancestors who for so many generations who have toiled in the dirt so that we may live better! We will not let their sacrifices be in vain! And we will toil as they have, for our children who still remain! The future of our nation lies in our hands! If we lose, then we will be martyred. But it is better to be dead, than to live in the cold chains of bondage, or even worse… to be made into a monster….

If we win, then songs will be sung of us until the end of time!

I know it was so hard, to struggle for so long and not to see any light at the end of the tunnel! To see our comrades die off, bit by bit! To have longed for victory when it has constantly eluded us! But now, finally things will change! So ready your weapons, ready yourselves and await your orders! For on the morrow we sail and march upon Amachi's stronghold!"

The cheer that erupted from the men practically shook the earth beneath them, many of them pumped their fists in the air or waved their weapons about. Their bloodlust and anticipation for the battle to come was palpable. And Naruto himself felt that same shudder of anticipation, even though he didn't have much of a stake in the cause himself.

Then Naruto turned and looked back at the man who was watching him earlier, he was not in the same place as before and Naruto could not pick him out in the crowd. He couldn't exactly recall what the man's appearance was. Naruto remembered him having tightly cut brown hair, but he couldn't remember anything else. He felt uneasy about the man, mentally he tried to assure himself that it probably nothing. But doubt nagged him.

That night it was not easy for Naruto to sleep, although he managed eventually.

As soon as the sun rose above the horizon the warriors of Umi no Kuni roused themselves and began preparations for the final march and the final battle. Rabbit stew and bread alongside tea was served to all in the morning. Everyone was given some dried deer meat and cheese to eat before the battle. They sat and ate together and their was excitement and chatter in the air. Naruto busily kept an eye out for the man that was watching him before, but he could not pick him out among the crowd. Before long everyone's things were packed up and they left the base completely deserted for the first time ever, there was no conversation among the men while they were marching. They marched in a single block organised and in the same timing as one another. A few captains stood to the side keeping the time. Hitode and his highest ranking were at the back riding horses. Naruto was near enough to the back of the group himself. He kept to himself and marched along with the rest of the men through the long pathway to the ocean.

By mid day the men were not far from the edge of the island. They rested alongside a river in a valley at the North of Mother Island. There they ate the rest of the food that they had, and anything else that they could scrounge from among the edible plant life growing beside the river.

Naruto was sitting down alone on a large rock beside the river, watching the ripples in the water when he was approached by Enba. "I haven't talked to you in a while my man. How are you getting on?" The soldier squatted down and looked at Naruto's face.

Naruto looked at him and for a moment was silent. Then he turned away and spoke his mind. "You know, watching all of you guys has taught me something."

"Whats that?"

"On my travels I've seen many people who lived their lives with a single purpose. They had a cause that they struggled for. They put their mind, their bodies and their lives on the line. For you guys its your homeland, I've seen other people who's cause was religion, or clan, or love. But I don't know what to fight for. I have no cause, no reason. Nothing. I really want something."

Enba stared at him in silence and no gave no response, he did not know what exactly to say.

"All I do is fight, but its empty. I fight… for the high of killing and exposing myself to the death of others and the potentiality of my own death, for the high of proving myself to be the stronger and no more. It's just a twisted sense of hedonism and it signifies nothing."

"Well you've got to find something."

Naruto nodded. "That's what I intend to do."

"You know with the way you are talking, I hope you are ready for the fight ahead."

Naruto smirked and turned sideways to dig his eyes into Enba. He pulled the top of his sword out of its sheath. "I am more ready than any of you guys are."

The call to march on was sounded in the background and soldiers began to rouse themselves to their feet once more.

"That's good, Naruto. I'm counting on you." Enba said as he patted the blonde on his back and then left to join the rest of the soldiers.

Naruto stared at the river for a brief few moments more before he too went on with the rest of the band. For some reason the second portion of the journey seemed longer to Naruto, even though it was actually over a shorter distance, through easier ground and took less time. He was overcome with a terrible sense of doubt, he'd managed to distract himself from it before, but now it came back. He began to question everything, he questioned why he even bothered coming here in the first place and why he even bothered joining along. The possibility of Hitode selling Naruto out was something that the lad couldn't stop thinking of, and that strange man who stared at him unsettled him too. There was also the fact that none of the men really went up to talk to Naruto, which was something that he found extremely odd. He began to daydream of deserting the group and heading someplace else, but at the same time he couldn't because he was surrounded by a large group of people that that would enact violence against him if he tried to run away, and even if he could run away, his pride would not let him. So he kept putting one foot in front of the other to the sound of the war drums and the marching chants.

Eventually they reached the edge of the ocean. They came to a remote farming hamlet which was inhabited by a few farmers and fishermen. Hitode had decided to use this isolated place as a base for setting off. There were two European style cogs resting in the water, anchored down not far from the pier, courtesy of Sijbrand's connections. Some of the local villagers took the men into the cogs, ten at a time in their small fishing vessels. They were only happy to help. It wasn't long before the entire force of men were all delivered onto the ships. Every able local man from the small community joined in the battle too, they were given swords by Hitode, though some of them had family weapons passed down from their forefathers. And the crew that manned the cogs were also added to the force. The men of Sijbrand's homeland wore bright red cloth and had their chests covered in a steel breastplate and wore a steel helmet. They were armed with pikes and crossbows. All in all the force consisted of around four hundred and fifty men. The 30 crewmen of the cogs, 20 villagers and hitode's 400 brave souls most of whom wore a uniform, some of whom like Naruto did not. The edges of the ships were lined by archers, pikemen and spear men, then behind them swordsmen and axemen stood ready. Followed by more layers of spearmen and swordsmen. The villagers stood at the centre as they were not well armoured, alongside a few of Hitode's men who were not in uniform. Hitode and his captains took to the upper deck of the ship. As far as Naruto could tell Enba was on the other cog, he saw Sijbrand at the captain's deck by the steering wheel conversing with Hitode and the other captains. He had changed into the armour of his countrymen. Naruto himself was in the centre with a few of the villagers. On the journey he conversed with a few of them, they were very nervous about the battle ahead but were proud to be a part of it. One of them remarked that this would be something that he would tell his grandchildren about. If he survived that was.

Soon the destination was in sight, Demon island. It was a small uninhabited island, although according to Hitode's intel, it was where the base of the enemy resided. They were poised to land on an old pier, that had not been used in nearly a century. Both of the cogs sailed towards it in unison. And all of the brave men on the two boats drew their weapons.

Then the kaiju came from the ocean. They were sea monsters like Isaribi. Naruto wondered if she was among them. A loud cry erupted from the side of the ship, and they clambered aboard. Naruto heard a "what the hell?" emerge from lips of one of the peasants at his side. There were four creatures, aboard Naruto's ship, and he couldn't tell what the situation was with the other boat. The Kaiju weren't all the same. One was humanoid and waked on all four, the other three were more bestial, with long elongated snouts they crawled on all fours with their webbed claws. The three bestial kaiju, each clambering over the side of the ship at different points, overpowered the spearmen at the front and crushed their bones under their weight. Then the humanoid one climbed onto the right hand side of the deck, behind of the beasts. The crossbowmen fired bolts at the creatures, one struck through and killed one of the beasts at the left, the bolt went through it's eye. The others bolts that hit, dug into the flesh of the beasts but did not seem to hinder them as they continued to thrash about aggressively. Naruto could hear Hitode barking orders at his men to arrange into a formation, spearmen and pike men arranged themselves around the beasts holding out their sharp blades to keep the beast at bay. The humanoid kaiju responded by stretching out his arms and firing projectiles at the men, hitting them in the face or in weak points in their armour such as at the joints. His projectiles were made out of the scales on his skin. New scales seemed to grow back very quickly to replace the old ones. A Crossbowman fired bolts at him, but he was quick enough to dodge them bolt, and he responded by firing his scales at the bowman, killing him.

Naruto noticed that in front of him, there was an opening between him and the kaiju to the right. So he sheathed his sword made a man dash for the creature. He sheathed his sword so that he could pick up a spear that lay on the ground, he did this mid run. The creature saw him charging and flicked it's strong muscular tail at the blonde. He dug into the tail with his spear, but was knocked back by the sheer force of the beast. He hit the wooden fence at the side of the deck with enough force to break it, and fell overboard. He flipped over as he fell and grabbed onto the ship's anchor which was pulled onto the side of the ship. As he pulled on the anchor the momentum which was bringing him to the water sent him crashing into the ship wall. Naruto resisted urge of loosen his grip from the shocking pain of being battered, and held firmly onto the anchor. He allowed himself one second to gather his mind. As he did so a crewmember was flung overboard screaming. The anger at the sight motivated Naruto to climb up once again. He pulled himself onto the deck and saw one of the quadrupedal kaiju in front of him, with it's back turned to him. The Uzumaki clansman drew his sword and jumped onto the creatures back, making his way to be above it's head. The kaiju tried it's best to shake him off, but it was in vain and Naruto finished the creature off by bringing the sword vertically down over it's head.

The humanoid kaiju looked at Naruto disapprovingly as he flicked his arm to fire projectiles at him. Naruto allowed himself to fall beside the dead kaiju and take cover. However the humanoid was faster than the lad expected. He appeared above Naruto, pinned him down and began to punch the lad in the face. His punches were extremely powerful and Naruto's nose was broken and his face all bloodied very quickly. However a swordsman from the village came to Naruto's rescue. With a sword pierced into the side of the humanoid, through it's heart, he felled the creature. Not wanting to give the blonde too much time to languish on the deck in agony he pushed the creature off Naruto and pulled the blood soaked blonde up with a smile and patted him on the back. "You alright?"

Naruto snapped his broken nose back into place and nodded to the peasant, making eye condact as he did so.

"We both have one kill on our count each hahaha."

"Yeah." Naruto replied shakily.

Then the two turned to look at the third beast just as it was being brought down by the combined efforts of a number of men surrounding it.

A loud cry of delight erupted from all the men on the ship as they raised their weapons. They all stamped on the ground and kicked up a wild ruckus. Naruto overwhelmed by the crowd forgot about his pain and joined in with the crowd. He held up his messer blade and shouted alongside them. The men's cheers began to die down until they heard a similar cheer erupt from the other ship, as they too had dealt with the kaiju that attacked them. which motivated the men aboard Naruto's ship to shout aloud once again.

But their battle cries were cut short, for the men saw something in the water which terrified them. It slithered about in the water unnoticed for quite a time, circling around the ships like a bird of prey. That was until it reached out it's head. A great sea-serpent, 50 metres long. For a brief moment it looked at the men through it's unfeeling yellow circular eyes, that glowed. The men stared at the creature in horror, and it stared back in hunger. Then without mercy opened it's mouth, revealing jagged teeth so sharp they looked like they could slice through concrete as if it were butter. It let out a mighty cry, that was half a roar and half a hiss, then reached it's limber neck and snatched an unfortunate swordsman from the side of the ship. He cried out for mercy, but received none.

Hitode screamed an order, "Bowmen ready!"

Upon his command, the crossbowmen fumbled about hastily readying the bolts in their bows, for the next time the monstrosity revealed itself.

It once again appeared, rearing it's long neck out of the water, but this time the men responded with crossbow bolts. Many struck through. The creature was not felled though. It swayed it's head about in pain hissing, before it responded. It slammed it's head and much of it's neck across the deck, breaking the fence and knocking many of the men overboard to their watery grave. Then, once again it grabbed a man with it's deathly jaws, only this time swallowing him whole above the water. It went on, picking man after man away from the two ships. The crossbow bolts made the creature bleed, but it did not seem to let up.

However the Sijbrand and his men had with them a harpoon. A very old fashioned one, that consisted of the spear and rope. Sijbrand himself had the honour and responsibility of using the weapon against the creature. The serpent showed itself to attack once again, and Sijbrand took aim, and threw the harpoon. The men all watched in anticipation, not knowing if Sijbrand's throw would hit or miss. It hit. The harpoon plunged right into the serpent, just behind its head. The serpent hissed in pain, but still lived and it decided to retreat into the water. Sijbrand pulled upon the harpoon rope, but was no match for the creature's strength. He began to be pulled overboard. Naruto made a mad dash for him and grabbed hold of him by the waist with his right arm. He punched a hole into the deck with his left arm and used it as an handle, holding him in place with all his might just before he would have fallen overboard. He knew that in Sijbrand's heavy armour, falling into the water would be certain death by drowning. Sijbrand himself held on with all his might to the rope., he closed his eyes in this effort to focus. Just as this happened, Naruto saw another humanoid Kaiju, peer her head overboard. He recognised her. It was Isaribi. They made eye contact for a brief moment. And Isaribi looked poised to pull the two overboard, or to cut the rope. Naruto stared at her, there was nothing he could do now. He was at Isaribi's mercy. And she showed him mercy. She jumped back into the water.

After a moment of hesitation, some men rushed to Sijbrand and Naruto's aid, they grabbed the rope alongside Sijbrand and with their combined might, pulled the serpent onto the side of the boat.

Hitode, manning the steering wheel drove the ship near a sea stack that jutted out of the water. The sea serpent's skull was crushed, between the weight of the ship and the rock. And the harpoon was set free of its flesh. Knocking all the men that held onto it over. They all quickly got up, and many of them cheered in victory. Sijbrand turned to Naruto, who was picking splinters out of his hand.

"What would we do without you, Naruto?"

Naruto smiled back. "The same could be said about you too."

The ship sailed on, mercifully unscathed by the collision. Some of the men on the ship, waved other to the other ship and cheered, the men there did the same back.

Amidst all these cheers of victory however, was uncertainty. Naruto looked at Hitode. "You know, the things we are fighting aren't human. Yet human is all we ….." He trailed off for a second as he reconsidered his statement, a part of him sometimes questioned his own humanity.

"Yet what?"

Naruto shook his head. "Sorry, yet all we are is…" He paused for a second time. "Human."

Sijbrand clenched his lips and narrowed his eyes, they his large forehead which jutted over them hid his eyes in shadow and they seemed to darken. He looked at the sea serpent's corpse which was for the time being floating in the water behind the ship, then turned to look back at Naruto. "Cut that shit out! Now is not the time to doubt ourselves, so far we have scored some victories in this battle, so far we are winning. Men have always struggled against things that aren't human. Our ancestors, battled against nature itself, against the weather and against other animals. It's called survival."

Naruto nodded. "I do. Although you could say we are a part of nature ourselves, and that we live in harmony with it."

Sijbrand raised his index finger. "I suppose that's true for our earliest ancestors, if you want to be pedantic about it. And it's true for us today as well to a certain extent. Anyway, we shouldn't worry about that we have a war to fight."

The kind of worries that Naruto brought up were also present in the men on board the ship. They whispered to one another of rumours that they had heard about the creatures that the evil scientist Amachi had created, how he was connected to an even more fearsome man called Orochimaru who they worried might also be present in the base. The rumours about Orochimaru were even more troubling than the already terrifying ones about Amachi. Naruto stayed silent for the rest of the journey, he simply meditated, breathing in the cold sea air through his nose and tried to keep calm yet also at the same time ready for any surprise.

There were no more occurrences out at sea and both of the ships docked safely at an abandoned pier, it was made of concrete so it had endured unmaintained for more than a century, a testament to the ingenuity of the people who lived in the island at the time. Naruto was curious as to why the island was abandoned. As he listened to the men around him he got his answer.

One of the Dutchmen asked one of Hitode's warriors. "Why was this island abandoned? It seems big enough to house a town and some farmland? Why let it go to waste?"

"Hmm many people say it's cursed. Historically it was always believed that there were many malevolent spirits on this island, hence it's name. There was a town that set itself up here despite those beliefs, and it was ravaged by the black death. It occurred during a national epidemic, which affected other areas too, but here not a single person survived the outbreak. That reinforced the old belief about the place, so we decided to just let it be. Then Amachi came along and people near the island started disappearing, then he had his coup d'état and well, you know the rest."

"Who is this Amachi person?" The Dutchman asked.

The soldier from the land of seas replied. "Nobody really knows, he has a connection to this fellow from the land of fire called Orochimaru, who is an extremely powerful Ninja that has an underground criminal empire throughout this continent. Though Amachi seems to have his own motivation. He belongs to a people that believes they are chosen to rule over all the others, and he wants to see his people rule over everyone else. He wants to create genetically modified soldiers , specialising in sea warfare to further his cause. He also has many connections to people in the upper financial elite as well, it's how he got his funds for his experiments."

Naruto turned his attention away from the conversation and focused on the task at hand. He fell in line with the other men and listened to the commanders as they organised the men into two rectangular blocks. Hitode stood upright and told the men to face him as he gave one last motivational speech. He walked down along the aisle between the two masses of men and there was silence as hid did so.

"Men! I thank you all for being here from the bottom of my heart. Whether you've only joined recently, or whether you've been here since the beginning. Whether you were born and bred here, or whether you have come from abroad. You are all true sons Umi no Kuni.

I don't know what exactly we will see, as we march upon Amachi's base, but I know it will sicken us. You will feel fear, you will feel anger, you will feel regret, you will feel loss, you will feel physical pain, you will bleed, you will be bruised, your throat will burn and you will feel like you are breathing fire. Do not become overwhelmed. Remember this. We are wolves. We are a pack. We are a unit. We are all one, and every one of you is the all. And we will go in there, and no matter what we see. We will kill the enemy. We will slaughter them!" He paued for a brief moment. "Ok, lets have a moment of silence, pray to whatever God you have, or to your ancestors or to whoever or whatever it is you worship." He went down on his knees and all the men did the same.

Naruto looked at the men around him. Some of the men of the Southern continent took out necklaces made of beads and a crucifix, the men of Umi no Kuni spoke quietly asked for the blessing of the divine Kami spirits or their ancestors. Naruto closed his eyes, he never really prayed at all before and he didn't know who to pray to. He didn't know who his ancestors were and never really thought about God. He didn't even know what to ask for, if God was worth praying to at all he doubted that God would care about helping him slaughter his enemies. As a matter of fact he didn't really care about praying, it's just that everyone around him was doing so and he felt pressured into it. Then he remembered something. _"Isaribi!"_ He thought to himself. _"I made her a promise that I'd repay her. I hope I can deliver, I hope that she doesn't end up getting killed in this battle."_ He clasped his hands to gether and spoke in a hushed voice. "God help me repay my debt to Isaribi." A strange feeling of tranquillity washed over him as he let the words he spoke hang in the air. Before he knew it all the men were standing up once again.

Hitode spoke once more. "Alright men, it's time t…"

"COMMANDER! THE ENEMIES ARE JUST BEYOND THE HILL!"

Hitode was interrupted by one of his scouts that he had sent out. After a split second of contemplation. Hitode screamed out. "TO THE HILLTOP!"

At his order all the men ran to the summit of the marram grass covered dunes that framed the bay. From the summit of the hill the men could see the enemies that they had to face. They all wore the same tatted clothing, flint grey shorts and a white shirt. Many were covered in intricate marks and some had skin that was like the bark of a tree and were covered in horns. Some resembled fish monsters like isaribi and some were more like lizards. They were all running up the hill in a mad frenzy.

"Defensive formations! Now! Spearmen in front, swordsmen and bowmen behind. "Light infantry to the side, Archers ready your weapons. It took only half a minute for the men to organise themselves.

Hitode ran back and forth in front of them.

"I see fear in your eyes! DON'T FEAR THEM! They may seem like monsters, but always remember, they are not invincible. Steel will pierce through them. Steel will kill them. AND WE ARE MEN MADE OF STEEL!"

The uproar that arose from the men by comparison made any cry of one of Amachi's creations look like the tweeting of a bluebird. The bloodlust emanating from them as they roared was palpable from a mile away.

Hitode turned around and outstretched his arm, extending his index finger.

"ARCHERS FIRE!"

A flurry of bolts shot at the mutants below killing some of them, yet they charged forward unperturbed."

"RELOAD!"

"ARCHERS FIRE."

As the mutants were closer this time more of them were killed, although they were now beginning to climb the hill.

"ARCHERS TO THE BACK."

"HEAVY INFANTRY CHARGE FORWARD DOWN THE HILL! FEAR NO DEATH! FEAR NO PAIN! KILL THE ENEMY!" The pikemen and the armoured swordsmen ran down the hill using momentum to their advantage as they pushed their way into enemy lines. Some of Hitode's captains had ordered the archers to move to the side with the light infantry where Naruto himself was positioned. "Enba gave the order to Naruto's flank to charge and so they did, Naruto was in the front lines and he ran with his messer sword straight towards the mutants at the side who were unprepared for their advance, before the light infantry came into contact the bowmen fired a number of bolts at the enemy to weaken their lines.

Naurto charged forward in front of his comrades and brought his sword down upon one mutant's head killing it instantly. He turned to face the next one behind it. As he did so the rest of his men caught up with him and the line between his allies and his enemies erupted into conflict. The mutant slammed down on top of Naruto with a thorny arm, but Naruto deflected the blow with his sword, knocking the mutant backwards. He dealt a quick and light blow to the creature that brought it down to his knees. Now that it was vulnerable he had the time to take an offensive stance and land a slow but powerful blow killing the mutant. Naruto had but a brief second to look around, beside him the men were engaged in combat with the mutants, one man to his right was struggling and just as Naruto began to think of helping him two more mutants were charging at him. These mutants were very strong and Naruto was in a cramped position, he was kept on the defensive, each of their blows tore away at the leather in his armour and they didn't give him time to recover. "Shit at this rate, they'll break my bones." Naruto thought to himself and he fell into a panic. However, Enba came charging from behind him with his katana and beheaded one of the mutants, this gave Naruto the opportunity to finally launch an attack, however Naruto was fatigued and the mutant dodged his attack and it knocked Naruto over. Thankfully Enba dispatched that mutant too, then he took Naruto by the hand and pulled him up. "You must keep calm, remember we are one unit. We have each other's backs." Naruto picked up his sword and nodded. He ran back into the fray, as he was no longer in the front line he worked with the other men on the battlefield in front of him, watching out to see if they were in trouble and helping them out when they looked like they were about to be overwhelmed.

Eventually Enba changed, tactics he ordered the men on his flank to withdraw and reinforce the centre, the bowmen covered their retreat, holding back the mutants from the side. The light infantry charged into the centre and gave the pikemen and other heavy infantry time to retreat backward themselves. Eventually the archers couldn't hold back the mutants from the side and they came charging. However the heavy infantry had formed a defensive stance and met the mutants in combat. The enemy were then broken apart and disorganised and the tide of the battle turned in the favour of Umi no Kuni's valliant defenders. The fray continued on for another ten minutes, Naruto was lost in the fight and only after slicing the throat of his last enemy did he notice that the men around him were cheering for victory.

It was then that the men noticed a group of about ten mutants who were standing at the bottom of the hill, one of them walked up the hill, he had tied his shirt to a stick and was waving it. Much like many of the other mutants his arms were covered in thorny bark like skin, however the rest of his body was human and covered in strange tattoo like marks.

Hitode ordered his bowmen to be ready as the mutant approached. When the thorny armed mutant was within five metres of the warriors, he laid down on his knees and waved the white flag.

"We surrender! Don't Kill us please. We are not like the rest that you just fought, we haven't lost our minds!"

Hitode approached the mutant and drew his katana, then he stopped and outstretched his katana arm so that the tip of the katana was just a few centimetres from the mutants forehead. "Alright, continue. What do you mean when you say you haven't lost your mind?"

"Amachi, he injects us with a drug that makes us follow orders and he tried to brainwash us so we do whatever he says, but our wills our strong."

"Yes, I'm aware of this drug."

"Sir. I know we look like monsters, but deep down were are people like you. Amachi is the real monster. We pretended to be like the rest so we could escape and take back our lives. But now we want to join you guys in your fight against Amachi, we want him dead just like you all do."

Hitode rubbed his beard and sighed. "Alright, you may join us."

"Oh! Thank you sir! I promise we won't fail you!" Exclaimed the mutant. His comrades who had already begun walking up the hill and were listening also showed similar signs ofe delight at Hitode's response.

"However!" Hitode interjected.

"Yes?"

"We can't fully trust you all yet, so you'll have to be tied down, don't worry when the final battle comes we'll untie you so you'll be able to fight."

The mutant nodded his head set down his flag and placed his hands behind his head. "Fair enough." Seeing this the other mutants did the same. And Hitode send some men to restrain them.

The battle was finally over, but many had fallen in that skirmish and some of the men were weeping. About half of the men from Sijbrand's country had perished by this point. Sijbrand approached them. "Lads, if you don't want to go on any futher I understand, and so would Hitode." One of the pikemen placed his hand on Sijbrand's soldier. "We will see this battle through, if for no other reason than to make sure our comrades didn't die in vain." All the others nodded in agreement.

Many of the villagers had also died, and Naruto could see one young lad in his mid teens kneeling down at the corpse of an older man when he saw it. He buried his head in the dead man's chest and burst into tears. "FATHER!"

Naruto drank some water from his canteen as his throat was burning. Hitode was right in his prediction about that in his speech. On top of that he had more bruises now than he could count and fresh new scars accompanied torn holes in his armour. He was pondering what would be coming next when none other than Hitode came upon him.

"Naruto how are you doing?" He asked while naruto was mid gulp.

Naruto wiped his lips. "Ah! Still alive. Still ready to fight."

"Good, I have a special task for you. This is something that only somebody of your eh… background can handle."

Naruto squinted his eyes suspiciously. "Ok. What is it that you want me to do?"

"Amachi's base is well fortified, getting into it will not be easy, and we don't have the resources to siege it down. There are two main entrances, one by land and one by sea.

I need you to sneak into Amachi's base and open the main entrance by land, to it so we can enter his base and finish the job once and for all."

"How will I know where to go?"

"Well we know the location of both entrances, though as to the actual internal structure there is not much we know. I'm just after interrogating those former prisoners. Not even they know the structure of the entire base and where to control panel is."

"So I'll just have to find out myself?"

"Pretty much. We'll be waiting and ready from the outside to make an assault once that gate is opened. Of course you can't go alone, I'll send Kou with you."

"Who is that?"

The man in question walked up, he was the member of the Umi no Kuni's royal dynasty who hadn't deserted his people that Naruto remembered from the speech. He was in his twenties, wore black armour and had black hair. The front of his head was shaved and the back of his head grew long, and was tied into a ponytail. He carried with him a spear and a shield. He walked up to Naruto and pointed at himself with his tumb. "I'm Kou."

Naruto nodded to Kou in greeting and they shook hands. Then he turned back to Hitode. "So what about one of the ex-prisoners. They'd be able to help too right? I mean they'd know the way around? Or some of it at least?"

Hitode shook his head. "No we cant trust them. This is too important of a mission?"

Naruto furrowed his brow. "But….But…. you trusted me pretty much right away, well enough to send me on a very important mission, did you not? I mean you couldn't possibly have know anything about me? Right?"

Naruto's response flustered Hitode. "Yes well…." Hitode was very clearly thinking about something. However he decided not to tell Naruto what that something was. In the end his responded with anger. "Nevermind that! My orders are my orders! Understand!?

Naruto nodded, he thought that this was all very strange, however he did not see the point in pressing the issue further any further. It was clear to him that Hitode was dead set in his decision making. "Alright, alright."

 **A/N I thought that this chapter would be the last, but it seems that this is taking longer than I thought it would. The next chapter could be the last in this arc, or it might actually take two more chapters. I don't know yet. We'll just have to see.**


	6. The Battle Of Demon Island

**A/N: Hey guys, it's been a while. I started out the chapter ages ago and got about 1200 words in or so, but the rest I wrote in the last 5 days. The next chapter will complete this arc. I haven't given up on this fanfiction for a while I just needed a break from it. And now I'm back! I'm considering starting some kind of a blog online where you guys can see my progress with each chapter. I plan on doing some original works on fictionpress and wattpad, eventually I do want to publish a book IRL but I'm nowhere near that. I haven't gotten started on the French version for this fanfiction yet.**

Naruto and Kou wasted no time in heading towards the secret entrance by sea to Hitode's base. They clambered along loose stony beaches, along rugged windswept cliffs and through dark and looming sea caves and sea arches. While they were journeying Naruto noticed something slightly off about Kou. He would often mutter to himself, and would sometimes stop walking mid-way for no reason while clutching his hair. It got to the point where, as they were nearing the entrance to the base, Naruto stopped and questioned Kou.

"Are you sure you are up for this Kou. You don't seem to be too well."

Kou breathed in sharply and as he spoke, he nodded awkwardly. "Yes, and no. You have to understand I've been through a lot these past couple months."

"That's fair enough, but will you crack under the pressure of this mission?" Naruto asked. "I do want you by my side when we are doing this, but our lives are at stake here, and everything we've all fought for too. If you can't handle this it might be better off that I go alone."

"Oh I can handle it don't you worry Naruto!" Kou slammed the base of his spear to the ground feverishly. "I've been ready for a long time. I want to bring back the honour of my dynasty. It's everything to me. I will not fail. Even th…. Ahem, even if it will kill me."

"Oh- OK." Naruto responded quietly.

"There is something I want you to do for me, Naruto."

"What's that?"

"I won't tell you yet, not until the time comes."

The resoluteness in Kou's eyes was unrelenting. He clasped his spear and marched forward with no hesitation. "Come on. Let's do this!"

Naruto nodded and followed Kou onwards. "Alright."

The pair eventually found their way into the entrance to the base. To an outsider it looked like just another impressive sea cave, but concealed not too far into the entrance of the cave were a number of passage ways into an underground base. Naruto and Kou swam into the cave, wearing their military grade life vests to keep afloat despite their leather armour and metal weapons.

Their swim was short, and before long they came upon one a ladder that led to one of the hallways of the base. Naruto was the first to climb up and he pulled Kou up and out of the hatch.

Naruto glanced around. Mercifully nobody was there. "Wow it's amazing to think that a metal structure like this is hidden behind all that natural rock."

Kou shook the water out of his clothes, "alongside wealth from many other sources, like drugs and contraband, my families riches were used in the construction of this place. It's not surprising when you know where it comes from."

Naruto placed a reassuring hand on Kou's shoulder. "Well you are here to restore your families honour now aren't you"

Kou smiled. "Yes. Thanks for that."

"Now which way should we go Kou?"

"I don't know." Kou replied, "but we should stick together for now."

And so with a goal in mind the two wandered aimlessly and without direction through the halls of metal and steel, constructed to keep secrets and victims in, and to have intruders blocked out.

They crept through dusty passages that lead to dead ends, and had to turn back many times, much to their frustration. Eventually they lead themselves to other passages, many of which led nowhere. All the while they ducked away from guards, and crawled past the vigilant eyes of security cameras through the ventilation system. Eventually after many hours they came upon a massive chamber, it was a very dark and grey place. Littered with the presence of a terrifying combination of great knowledge and great evil. The platinum floors, although very obviously kept disinfected could not hide their secrets. The blood that was spilled on that very floor was known to Naruto. In his mind the voices of the myriad of victims echoed in his very footsteps. It reminded him of a similar place that he discovered in his very own place of origin, Konoha.

In one corner of the chamber there were a number of tanks filled with a luminescent green liquid. They contained specimens that Amachi and his associates had clearly been experimenting on.

"This is where all the people have been disappearing to." Kou murmured. "What a terrible fate."

"All their hopes and dreams." Naruto added. "And they died in a place like this."

"Not to mention my family are responsible for this." Kou grimaced. "It's sickening really. Our ancestors were honourable, the founding member of our dynasty was a great leader who united the peoples of the archipelago against an invading force. Now that honour our family once had is disgraced, no more."

"Well Kou, you haven't betrayed this country, and you are a member of the dynasty."

Kou stared at the ground, he could not look Naruto in the eye. "How I wish that were true."

"What!?"

"At the start, Amachi approached us promising many great things. He promised power, he promised independence and great prosperity. We were fooled by him."

"Well…. It's not like it's your fault that you were misled, at least you came to realise it."

Kou shook his head. "We all realised where Amachi was heading quite early on, when we saw his first experiments. The bloodshed…. Ohh the bloodshed! We all knew then that Amachi was having us on. Some of my family wanted to put a stop to it all. But lives had been sacrificed, and our hands were bloodstained, many of us, myself included, we didn't want to admit to ourselves the mistake we made. And so we deluded ourselves into continuing on with Amachi's project. And we reacted angrily at our family members that had come to their senses."

"Well how did you come to your senses then?"

Let's just say that being a kin-slayer weighs heavily on my mind, I know I have to do something to redeem myself, and the others."

For a while there was an ear splitting silence between the two. Naruto wanted this silence to end, yet he could not for the life of him think of something to say. But then suddenly an idea popped into his head. "You said earlier that there was something you wanted me to do for you?"

"Ah that. Well. You can forget about it. I wanted you to tell everyone that I gave my life for this island, so that when the sins of my dynasty were made apparent, they would not look down upon us all unfavourably and our family would not go down in history hated, but, do we really deserve to go down in history at all?"

Naruto scratched his head. "So you have a death wish then?"

"Yes."

Naruto paused briefly in thought before uttering, "I don't think that's a good idea Kou. Death is not your only choice. You don't bear the sins of all your dynasty. You only bear your own sins."

"That's not how our culture works my friend. Aren't you from the land of Fire? It's the same there as it is here. A family, a clan, a dynasty, whatever you want to call it, while it is composed of individuals those individuals are all one. And if one individual disgraces himself, it disgraces the whole!"

Naruto briefly thought back to the clans in Konoha, he never really thought about how they all worked together in the past, most of the time he just wanted to join them. But looking back Naruto could recognise the pattern of behaviour that Kou was describing in them. "I think I know what you are talking about…. But I never really payed much attention to it because I never had a family of my own, so it didn't apply to me so much."

Kou nodded. "I see. Anyway, we must focus on the task at hand."

"Right."

They set about searching the room cautiously, in the event that there might be a hint of where to go to find the control room. All manner of abominations were laid before their eyes, notes for experiments that had been performed upon poor wretches, plans for future evil acts and bones of victims filed away without respect. Still they could not find any clues to direct them where to go.

Naruto turned around to tell Kou that the two of them should move on. However when he faced where his back had been turned he was overcome with shock.

All he could see was a thick and hazy mist. It obscured vision totally, all Naruto could see of the room was the ground just at his feet. Other than that it looked like he had died and went to some kind of limbo where the souls of the dead wafted eerily about in the form of a thick and impenetrable mist.

Naruto tried to sense his surroundings, to detect the presence that caused this mist to come about. At first he felt nothing but his own instinctual fear piercing into him like needles. But then slowly, he detected a presence. He could hear very slight noises, like the shuffle of feet. But it did not seem like a natural sound. Quite the opposite in fact. It was too light, too sneaky a sound to be genuine. Like the rustle of dry leaves under the foot of a tiger. It was the sound of a predator stalking its prey. Naruto could not move under this oppressive hollow sound, it held him in a trance.

The next sound Naruto heard, was a scream. Coming from Kou. It came with a crunch, the sound of bones being crushed, and a gush of flowing blood. Then a subdued whimper form Kou as he fell unconscious before his heart stopped. Though Naruto could not see any of this in his eyes, as his vision was obscured by the sorrowful mist. In his mind, the vision of Kou's death was very clear. He saw the fear and confusion in Kou's eyes, as a large blade sliced through him, then his upper half was in the air, then it landed to the ground, and then Kou blacking out before the end. Then his unconscious body slowly losing its life.

Naruto knew that if he did not act soon, he would be next. But he was held transfixed in place.

Then the presence he felt changed. It felt like a great bear stood before him ready to take a swipe at him with its muscular claws of death. But Naruto couldn't move. He tried to will his body to move, but it did not. He was sure that death would take him.

He jumped in the air. Not knowingly however, and it took him so long that he was already in elevation before he realised it. His body fell backwards. While this happened only a few seconds had passed, but it felt like twenty minutes. Then he heard an ear wrenching crash of metal on glass, followed by the sound of water cascading onto the floor. He drifted back down to the ground at an angle and his feet landed deftly like a cat, before jumping back some more. As he did so he felt a gush of wind brush against his face. He fell back against something fleshy, a taxidermized test subject. And as he did so he let out a cry of terror not knowing what to do. But his subconscious made him duck, and once he did he could hear that same tearing sound of metal ripping through flesh. Naruto took control of his body once more and rushed away to the corner of the room. He hid his presence as best he could while doing so, holding his breath, quelling the flow of his chakra, making himself as small as possible.

The killing presence stopped seeming so menacing all of a sudden. Naruto was confused, he did not know what had happened, but hoped that perhaps whoever or whatever he was fighting had lost track of him. After a minute of doing nothing but sitting and waiting to burst into movement at a hair trigger, Naruto noticed that the presence had become less and less threatening. Had it thought that it killed Naruto once when it cut open the taxidermized experiment? Either that, or it was a trap and that it was waiting for Naruto to do something. Regardless Naruto knew he had to get out of there, trap or no trap. So he slowly slinked away out of the room as quietly as he could, minimising his presence all the way.

Once he had gotten two minutes down the hallway he shifted him focus from being quiet to running as fast as he could. He had barely gotten away with his life. There was no way that he could see himself defeating whatever had killed Kou, except by blowing up the building with that thing in it.

As he ran along he sensed another presence. It was the Ninja by the name of Yoroi, who's companion Naruto had killed after the pirate ship had blown up.

Yoroi looked shocked.

"N-naruto?!"

Naruto stopped in his tracks and drew his sword.

"Yoroi! I knew I'd run into you eventually…"

"What happened to Zabuza? D-d-did you kill him?" Yoroi shrank away from Naruto slowly.

Naruto looked at Yoroi confused, though he dared not show any expression. "Who?"

"T… the guy with the big sword…. The ex-Hidden m-Mist Jonin….."

"Hidden Mist Jonin?" Naruto questioned aloud. ' _Hmm, so that's what I came across back there…. a Jonin….that class of warrior is the most elite kind of Ninja in the hidden villages. Sooner or later he'll know I'm not dead, and I can't afford to waste time fighting Yoroi here…_ "

Naruto cleared his throat. "Oh him…. Yes, he was tough enough, but nothing I couldn't handle!" Naruto stepped forward with a sly grin on his face.

Yoroi's eyes widened, he recoiled from Naruto. "No! Stay back!"

"You're a dead man Yoroi!"

"No! Please! Look! I'll do anything! Just show mercy!"

Naruto pointed in the direction that he came. "I'll give you ten seconds to get out of my sight."

Tears welled from Yoroi's eyes. "Oh thank y…"

"If…!" Naruto interrupted. "You tell me where I can find the control room."

"It's not far, just keep straight and then go up some flights of stairs and you'll get to it."

"Alright then. 10, 9 8, 7,"

Yoroi jumped to his feet and bolted down the hallway. Once he was out of sight Naruto giggled to himself for just a moment, but remembering the seriousness of his situation he bounded away.

Naruto found the stairs that Yoroi had spoken of. It was a metal staircase that rasped unnervingly as he climbed up its course. When he reached the top he was disappointed to only find only a dead end hallway with nothing but a few empty prison cells.

"That bastard lied to me!" Naruto muttered angrily. He set about going back down the railings but stopped when he heard shouting in the distance. Faintly through the halls he heard the name "Zabuza" amid the shouting. Naruto's heart started beating fearfully, adrenaline rushed into his system once more.

' _Oh hell, they are definitely on to me now_.'

With a bashing sound he made his way back up the metal stairs and into the halls of the top floor. He could feel the oppressive presence of the Mist-Village Jonin once again. Naruto needed to escape, he looked to the ventilation system and saw an opening. He changed the position that he carried his sword to his back and then he pulled open the latch and jumped into it, pulling himself head first into the vents. Then he pushed back over the opening and moved backwards through the vents legs first. Along the way he closed the latch. It was incredibly awkward, as the vents were quite narrow and his sheathed sword dug into his back. No doubt he would have lacerations after this. The vents proceeded down the hallway, but turned out of the hall and into another room near enough to where Naruto climbed in.

Naruto wiggled his way through the vents until he nearly exited the hall, and just his head poked into the hallway. Through some holes in the ventilation system, Naruto could see the hallway. He stopped moving when he saw Yoroi. Once again Naruto focused on hiding his presence as he had done earlier.

Yoroi turned around to face the one called Zabuza. "He must have gone up here!" Yoroi spoke loudly. "Dammit! I told him that this was the way to the control room… Maybe he knew I was lying."

Zabuza prowled into Naruto's view. He was a tall and threatening, his skin was a strange combination of pale and dusky not unlike that of a corpse. It was as if Zabuza's skin had taken on that tone from all the people he'd killed. His hair was dark and he wore a black sleeveless shirt and matching pants. His jaw was covered in bandages like a mask, so that whatever kind of human expression he was still capable of making would be hidden away. Most strikingly of all, upon his back he carried what one should call a sword, but it was so big that one might also just consider it a hunk of metal. Such a sword would better suit an ogre or a giant than a man. Yet Naruto knew first hand just how skilfully and lethally Zabuza wielded that accursed weapon.

Much to Naruto's disquiet Zabuza spoke of him. Although it was with some praise. "Yes, he's a slippery one. I've never had somebody ever hide their presence from me like that before. He could become quite the fearsome Ninja."

"We're going to kill him first!" Yoroi interjected angrily.

Zabuza laughed. "Are you butthurt cause he made you wet your pants? Hahahaha! I can't believe you fell for his act! Still though, it's impressive he managed to do that given how much pressure he must have been under."

Yoroi grimaced, but knew that he could say nothing. "We have to find him! He must have headed downstairs, he might be nearing the control room by now! We can't let Amachi be threatened!"

Zabuza, put his hand to his chin. "Hmm, one moment…"

He took out his big sword, sliced a point in the air vent.

Naruto wanted to gulp, but dared not. He held his breath silently.

Zabuza sliced open the vents at another location, and then another. Walking nearer and nearer to Naruto's spot each time.

Then Naruto's ears were met with a clamour as Zabuza crashed his executioners blade through the vent just on inch from Naruto's head.

The blade retracted from the vent in a blur. Naruto could not properly register the speed of it in his mind. And he began to feel light headed.

Zabuza sheathed his blade. "I guess he didn't go this way so.

Naruto waited until he could hear them having reached the bottom of the stairs before he dared move again. And when he did so he found that he had even more trouble squeezing through, as he hyperventilated so much that his chest swelled, pushing him against the walls of the vent.

He crawled backwards through those vents for what seemed like an age. Not knowing if he would get stuck, or not be able to make a sharp turn. Most of the turns he had to make caused his sides to be dug into most painfully. Crawling feet first was not the best idea, but it was necessary to be able to close the hatch and hide his tracks.

Eventually he could feel his legs slip out of an opening in the vents. Slowly he pushed his whole body out and he hung from the opening with his fingers. He briefly seized up the new room he was in and saw nobody there. The vent was well above the ground level so Naruto took the utmost of care in scaling down the walls. This was only possible because of the disrepair that they were in.

When Naruto reached the floor he looked around the room some more.

It was a large and open room with a tiled floor. The room was in disrepair, the roof and walls were pained a jaundiced yellow, but much of the paint was crumbling leaving dirty brown rusted stains all over the place and rubble was strewn about all over the place. On one half of the room there was a platform which led to other rooms, at one point this platform had collapsed. The tiles of the floor, though they were supposed to be white originally overall gave off a faint murky grey colour. Naruto took a moment to clear his head. "Ahhh." He sighed and in a moment of weakness spoke to himself. "Maybe I should just get out of here." He did not expect a response, but he got one from a familiar female voice.

"Yeah, maybe you should."

It was none other than Isaribi, this time in her mutant form. She stared down at Naruto from the railing.

"Isaribi." Naruto spoke solemnly but also longingly.

Isaribi jumped to the ground before him from her height landing deftly on her hands and feet, and then she pounced.

Naruto was knocked off his feet and struck the cold hard tile floor with his back.

It did not take too long for Naruto to right himself, but it would've been long enough for Isaribi to follow up with another blow. But she simply stood in place baring her teeth at him.

But once Naruto had wobbled to a stand she attacked him again and knocked him back.

This time he fell flat on his face, and blood streamed from behind his left eye and his nose.

Yet once again he rose to his feet.

Isaribi trembled at the sight of him. Naruto outsretched his arm, and opened his mouth to let both blood and words pour out. "Please…..enough…."

"Grrrrr! Why won't you fight back!" Isaribi cried out in tears, as she kicked Naruto in the stomach and knocked him back against the wall.

"Ngh." Naruto tried to get up, but fell flat on the front of his body. "Ah!"

For a moment the two were motionless. Naruto's face was on the ground and he breathed heavily, and Isaribi stared down at Naruto trying not to let her conscience get the better of her.

The brief momentary truce ended as Naruto grabbed Isaribi in the shin, and looked up at her, making eye contact. "Why? Why are you working for these guys?"

Isaribi's lips quivered. "I bet you think I'm a terrible person. Huh? Believe me I never wanted this, I'm just as much a victim as anyone else here. I was one of the first people to be experimented on!" She hung her head downwards. "Even though I escaped, when I returned I was met with nothing but scorn. You see how the townspeople treated me! People judge others by their appearances. So long as I am like this I'll never be accepted anywhere!"

Naruto looked down from Isaribi's eyes. "Let me guess, they promised to fix you, right?"

Isaribi dipped her head. "When they found me after I escaped, I thought they were going to kill me, but instead they reassured me and told me that they'd put me back to normal if I worked for them."

"And what is normal?"

Isaribi's eyelids drooped. "I just want to go back to being the way I was before. Without all…" She looked at her webbed and scaled hands. "Without all this. I just want to be human again!"

A silence hung between them once again. During the silence Naruto let go of Isaribi's leg. His face contorted and he heaved an aggravated sigh.

"YOU ARE HUMAN!"

Naruto's shout came out of nowhere and Isaribi stumbled backwards, now she was the one who was at a loss for words.

Nartuto rose to his feet and swayed a little due to fatigue as he stood.

In a low and hushed tone he said, "Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

Naruto's kind words angered Isaribi. "It's easy for you to go ahead and say that! But nobody sees me as a human! If I were to join your side, they'd kill me!"

Naruto spoke slowly and carefully. "Listen! I know what you are going through. I feel your pain, I'm going through basically the same thing as you."

"Shut up! Just because you are some kind of ex-ninja doesn't make you a freak like me! I have scars all over my body, I have these scales all over my body, even when I'm not in this form! That's what's covered up by the bandages! Everywhere I go my difference is noticeable, at least you can blend in. And all you'd have to do is go to some Ninja village and you'd find tons of people like you! I've got nobody!"

"HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!" Naruto sneered. "If that's the case then why did I run away from the Ninja village I grow up in? I haven't told you the first thing about me. But let me tell you something now… I've been an outcast since the day I was born! And until recently, I didn't even really know why."

Naruto sighed and calmed his voice. "I'm not trying to play some pain Olympics game with you here though, I just want you to understand that I know what you are going through."

Isaribi was about to protest, but then she remembered back when she took Naruto in. How he'd healed so quickly, and how he accidentally snapped at her when she mentioned it. She knew he was telling the truth. Tears welled up in her eyes. "I don't know what to do! I just want to be normal!"

"Do you think that Amachi guy is gonna make you normal? I mean we are talking about a man who performs human experimentation, who's murdered countless people. I don't think he's planning on healing you, so much as he's planning on dissecting you."

At Naruto's words Isaribi fell to the ground. She had a deadened look in her face. "No. That's not…."

She looked at her webbed fingers which convulsed erratically. Then she buried her hands in her face and let out a scream. "Shut up! Why are you tormenting me! Shut up! Shut up!"

Naruto looked up towards to railing hoping nobody would be alerted by Isaribi's scream. But then he returned his attention to Isaribi, lifting her up from her kneeling position on the ground and embracing her in his arms. He placed his hand on her head and gently patted her. "Listen, you saved my life Isaribi. You are a really good person! I know it!"

Isaribi could no longer hold back the swelling tide of emotion in her form. She burst into a fit of crying.

Naruto pulled her even more tightly into his embrace. He enjoyed the feeling of her pressed up against him.

' _I've never hugged anyone before…. this is really nice._ ' He thought to himself.

He patted her head. "You should get out of here. Maybe there is a doctor out there who can fi…., –well I won't say fix you, because I think you are fine– but undo the effects of the experiments."

Eventually Isaribi calmed down and breathed at a normal rate once again. At which point she ended their embrace by pushing back gently. She turned around with her back faced to Naruto, mostly to hide how profusely she was blushing. "Come on, I'll show you where to control room is, then I'll leave you do whatever."

Naruto smiled. "Thank you, Isaribi. Now you get out of here soon OK? But first, lead the way!"

They were about to depart, but all of a sudden Naruto and Isaribi had company.

"Well, well, well…." The man who spoke stood on the balcony, accompanied by Zabuza and Yoroi behind him. He wore a lab coat and had dirty greasy hair. His eyes were soulless and his face bore a sinister smile.

"Amachi – sama!" Isaribi gasped.

The mad scientist sneered at Isaribi. "You should have been able to take him out! You useless Guinea pig!" He began to shake in what at first seemed like anger. But very quickly it became apparent that it was something else. His skin bubbled and boiled until eventually much like Isaribi he transformed into a mutant arthro-fish creature. His eyes were bright red and his sinister smile became bloodthirsty now that it was equipped with jagged shark teeth.

"You are a useless guinnea pig!" He shouted in a voice that seemed barely human. He expanded his cheeks and spit out a burst of water which knocked Isaribi back.

Naruto drew his sword. "So, you are Amachi then?"

"Yes! And you are that pesky child who's been causing us so much trouble!" He laughed sadistically.

"How could you do such horrible things to people! You're an evil bastard!"

"Evil? Good?" Amachi laughed histerically. "There are no such things!

I've long since abandoned such childish notions….. Of course a simpleton like you would still have them. We are all just naked apes on a mudball acting on our own instincts! Only I seek to better humanity! To build us to something more, something better!"

"Say whatever the hell you want you freak! You think you are some kind of genius! Hah! Pathetic! You're not a scientist, you're just a murderer!

Humanity can move on without you! Humanity doesn't need you, in fact it would be better off if you disappeared!" Shouted Naruto.

Amachi grimaced. "You insolent little brat!

What would you know about being a Scientist?!"

Zabuza stepped forward and grasped the handle of his sword. "Before you waste any more time arguing with him? Should I kill him?"

Naruto nervously tightened his grip on his sword.

Yoroi, who had his arms folded rushed forward and gripped the railing. "No Lord Amachi! Let me kill him! Please! I want to avenge Misumi's death!"

Amachi turned to Zabuza. "Sorry Zabuza, but I'd rather Yoroi here take out this pest. I want to honour his wishes."

"And what about the girl?" Asked Zabuza as he let go of his sword and leaned back against the wall.

"Oh, let Yoroi take care of her too… We don't want you cutting her in half. We'll be dissecting her ourselves later on! Ahahaha"

Isaribi had gotten up after being knocked back by Amachi's water blast, but when she heard Amachi's words she fell to her knees once again.

"Isaribi!" Naruto rushed to her and placed his hand reassuringly on her shoulder. Then remembering the situation and how he shouldn't have his back to the enemy, he turned around and charged forward at Amachi, clenching the hilt of his sword. "I'm gonna kill you!"

Amachi extended his arms before him and let loose a flurry of scales at Naruto. He tried to dodge and deflect them, but some buried into his skin painfully.

"Hah! I'd like to see you try!"

"Lord Amachi." Said Yoroi. "Now?"

"Be my guest."

Yoroi dived down from the railing at Naruto.

Naruto swung his sword at Yoroi in response, but he was injured and fatigued and Yoroi easily weaved around his attacks. And by punching the wrist of his sword arm, Yoroi disarmed the blonde.

"Now then It's time you gave me your chakra." Yoroi's hands glowed a light blue as he pinned Naruto to the ground pushing down on the weakened lad.

Naruto let out a cry of frustration. He had been fighting hard all day and was tired. Whereas Yoroi was well rested and fresh on the battlefield. Worse still Naruto felt his strength slowly ebbing away, as if he were bleeding out.

"Hahaha what's wrong feeling weaker? Yoroi pressed his face uncomfortably close Naruto's and stared directly into his eyes. "You know what? I think I'll take my time kiling you!" He whispered at Naruto with his slithery voice. "You'd make a good test subject! And I'll make sure to inflict as much pain on you as possible!"

Naruto couldn't speak, all he could do was stare angrily at Amachi as his vision slowly faded away. First he could see grey blotches, then the corners of his line of sight became hazy, and soon everything went grey, then black.

Naruto sat in that blackness for a while. His eyes were closed, he was tired and he didn't want to open them. So he lay down, with his lids shut.

He no longer felt like he was in Amachi's lair, but he felt like he was somewhere else. He saw nothing, but the feeling of the place was very familiar. Yet he had no recollection of anything quite like it. He just knew that he felt it all before.

There was a presence beside him. Primeval and ancient. Something menacing and powerful. Naruto could feel it's breath on his skin. But he could not hear it's breath. He felt strange wafts of energy flicker about his body, it made him tingle wherever they touched him. At first the tingling sensation only affected random parts of his body, but it spread to envelop him wholly.

Through his ears all he hear was the soft rhythmic gurgling of deep ocean water under the surface.

But he heard voices too. Not with his ears, but in his mind. They echoed and chanted. They were numerous. They were endless. They were legion.

"That boy huh?" Spoke a middle aged housewife.

"Look isn't that they boy?! He gives me the creeps!" Remarked a young woman in her twenties.

"What are you doing! I told you not to talk to him!" Spoke a kid.

"Go away! You! You freak!" Shouted a shop owner.

"Freak!"

"You should just kill yourself kid" Shouted a grown man.

"He's a monster! Don't even look at him!" Shouted a mother.

"I told you to stay away from him!" Warned a father

"Freak! Why don't you die!"

"Nobody wants you around! Can't you see your nothing but a pest?!"

All of the voices were from Naruto's past. There were thousands of them, and many of them spoke over each other at the same time. Despite this, Naruto could hear them all clearly.

But another voice emerged out among the many. It was faint and distant, but it reached the boy. "Naruto! Naruto! Come back! Please!"

' _Isaribi…._ ' Naruto thought to himself.

A sense of urgency and desperation took hold of him. ' _I can't leave her alone…'_

The voices stopped. And Naruto opened his eyes. He stared at a black abyss, but to his sides there was a faint fiery light. Naruto was lying in a pool of water, coloured a dappled golden like beech trees in autumn. He pulled himself up and saw a great and mighty gate. It was greater than the entrance to a fortress. The sheer size of the structure was awe striking. At its centre was a spiralling circle. Two giant red eyes appeared behind the gate.

 **"You are so weak!"** The voice that spoke to Naruto came from behind the gate. It was a deep and rumbling voice with the strength of a thousand earthquakes.

A paw loomed into view. It was gigantic, just one toe was three times Naruto's size. It's fur was a bright orange. Wisps of red smoke steamed off of the paw.

Naruto was awe struck by what he saw. But he felt no fear. "Who are you?" He asked loudly.

 **"GRRRRRGHHH"** The entity brought it's face into view. It was the face of a great and gigantic fox, with jagged teeth. The red smoke emanated all around it. The entity's fur was like fire.

Naruto stood resolute. He looked up towards the creature, into its eyes. "You're the nine tailed fox aren't you?"

 **"Hmmm, not afraid of me huh?"**

"Why would I be afraid of you? I'm assuming you're the reason I'm still alive, I'm right aren't I?"

 **"You're damn right! If it weren't for me, that weakling would have sucked out your life force! You should thank me!"**

"You mean Yoroi? Where am I? Am I still back there? What is this place?"

 **"Yes! And thanks to me you are not dead! Not true for that bastard though. How dare he try to steal MY chakra! Still though…. I had my fun. Normally I just sleep, but this time I got to tear some pathetic humans apart limb from limb! Lucky for you, boy now you don't have to fight them!**

"Oh…. Thanks for that…" Naruto scratched his head. "Say, how do I talk to you? Can I only do it when I'm near death or something?"

 **"If I want to talk to you, I will! But now I grow tired of it. Go away and handle things from here boy! DON'T mess it up! If you die, so do I, and that would be annoying as hell."**

Before Naruto could question what the Nine tailed fox meant by death being "annoying" he found himself awake once again in Amachi's lair, this time with some of his energy replenished. His hands were covered in blood. Before him lay Amachi's corpose. It was completely ravaged, bits of his bones were strewn all over the place, and his face was shattered in bloody pieces.

Disorientated, Naruto turned around to see Yoroi's corpse. It had was beheaded and had a hole punched right through its torso.

In the corner of the room Isaribi crouched fearfully. She looked at Naruto with a mixture of concern and relief in his eyes.

Naruto opened his mouth to speak, and found that his voice was fainter than he thought it would be. "D-did I do this?" He asked Isaribi.

But Zabuza answered. "Yes, you did!" He stood on the railing still, there was another ninja beside him, the ninja was masked.

"Lord Zabuza, we have to get out of here now!" Said the masked Ninja.

"All right Haku, let's get out of here, I was getting tired of working for Gato and Amachi anyway…." He turned to Naruto. "I have no reason to fight you anymore, since you just killed the guy who was paying me. You were fun to mess around with. Bye!" Then both Zabuza and his parntner Haku cast a number of hand signs and disappeared.

Only a moment passed and footsteps could once again be heard. Naruto turned to Isaribi. "Quick run! It's Hitode and his men. Get out of here! I'll meet up with you later!"

Isaribi nodded without saying a word and ran off.

Naruto climbed up over the railing and onto the platform and sure enough e was right. Hitode and his men were marching proudly down through the hallway. Naruto saluted them and walked up to greet him.

"Hitode sir! Amachi is dead!"

The bearded general smiled, at Naruto's words. "Good job Naruto. You must be tired."

The blonde nodded. "I am. But first let me prove it to you." He turned around to lead Hitode and his men to Amachi's corpse. "By the way." Naruto asked "how did you get in here?"

"Ah that, well….."

 ***WHUMP!***

Naruto was struck in the head, he felt light headed and fell to the ground. The last thing he heard before falling unconscious was Hitode's words.

"A Konoha Anbu black ops managed that feat. Sorry Naruto, you were a faithful soldier, but Konoha is paying me a high price to have you captured."

 **A/N: That's it for the chapter. Thanks for reading. Let me know what you thought.**


	7. Lets get out of here!

**A/N: Oh my oh my oh my! I wrote this all in one go! I am amazed with myself. This chapter finishes off the first arc. It's half six in the morning now and I haven't slept but it was worth it! At least I don't have any lectures tomorrow. Before all I could write in one sitting was 300 words. Now I just wrote ten times that number! Enjoy guys!**

Naruto woke up in chained in a damp brick cell, his wrists were searing from the friction caused by his shackles. A dull pain reverberated in his head, his neck was cricked from his head being hung down during unconsciousness. It had been a day and a half since Amachi was defeated, and this was not the first time Naruto had woken up since Hitode's betrayal of him at the end of the battle of demon island. In that time he had to bear with a considerable amount of torture. Naruto's back was scourged severely. Fresh scars and lacerations from hours of beatings and whippings were more prevalent of a feature on his back than bare skin.

In the background shouting and crying could be heard. Among them was a female voice, though most of the voices were male.

The temperature in the cell was cold, and Naruto's sleep was not an easy one. The whole night he was shivering as the only clothes his captors afforded him were his ragged pants.

His cell was guarded by two Konoha Anbu Black Ops.

Of all the Jonin in the Hidden Ninja Villages, only the most elite, the most ruthless and the most dark can become Anbu Black Ops. They are what is to be feared in the night, they carry out the most dangerous and important missions for their respective villages.

However Naruto had the rare chance of witnessing how they behave when not acting so professionally. The two Ninja were sitting at a table, their masks were removed and they were gambling. Before when they were torturing him they were masked, so this was the first time that Naruto saw their faces. Naruto recognised one of them.

When he had first come to Hitode's compound, he remembered seeing a strange black haired man staring at him. One of the Anbu Black Ops was that very man. The other Anbu black ops was middle aged, bald and slightly pudgy but well built at the same time.

"Come on sixes, daddy needs you!" Said the bald Anbu as he rolled two dice. "Ah crap! Snake eyes!"

The dark haired Anbu laughed. "Oh yeah! That'll by 40 ryo for me old man!"

The middle aged Anbu leaped off his chair and plodded around the room in anger, then he stopped when he saw Naruto, and began to walk over to the blonde. "Hey look it's awake." He opened the metal gate to Naruto's cell and entered.

"What are you doing you idiot!" Said the younger dark haired Anbu.

"Relax! He can't do a damned thing if he's all tied up like this!" Said the older Anbu, before he punched Naruto in the face hard enough to make Naruto's head knock back.

The dark haired Anbu walked into the cage. "I suppose we could have some more fun with it!"

The bald ninja resumed beating Naruto. He went for a number of different places around his body, his face, his legs, his chest, his stomach. "I hear Jinchuuriki become just like the tailed beasts that are sealed inside of them!"

The black haired Anbu stared at Naruto noticing that his eyes had changed from blue to red, and his pupils had changed from normal to slitted. "Hey look at his eyes! They're just like the foxes ones!"

"Yeah! See what I'm talking about. You're no different from that damned fox!" The bald Ninja pulled his fist back and punched Naruto in Naruto's lips bursting them open and leaving a trail of blood pouring down. "Maybe we should just kill him now?"

The black haired Ninja shook his haid. "No need, once our fellow ROOT members come, we'll bring him back to Danzo. And then he will have the nine tails removed from him and then this traitor will die."

The bald ninja stared into Naruto's eyes. "Yeah death is what you deserve for abandoning Konoha.

Even though we had put up with you and your annoying pranks and evil antics for so long, we still didn't abandon you. You were still going to be a Ninja of the leaf! But then you betrayed us and left!"

"Who knows what kind of nasty things he's been plotting." Said the black haired Anbu.

The bald ninja stopped wailing on Naruto for a brief moment and turned to his companion. "Him? Don't you mean **it**?"

The black haired ninja laughed. "Oh yeah sorry. It. That's right!"

Much to Naruto's surprise Hitode strode in, accompanied by Enba who had a sullen expression on his face.

"The two Anbu turned around to face the two.

"Hitode? I'm afraid I can't allow you in here. The Jinchuuriki is our property and while you've been awfully co-operative, theres no way we can trust you fully.

"Yes, I know. But can I ask a small request of you?" Said Hitode

"Denied!" said the bald Ninja.

Hitode carried on anyway. "My subordinate Enba here at first kept complaining to me about what we did to Naruto. It got me a little concerned about his loyalty. But now he seems to have a change of heart after learning a bit about that night when the Nine Tailed fox destroyed your village. He wanted to prove to me his continued loyalty."

"The bald ninja rubbed his chin. "OK go on…"

"Would you let Enba wail on the Jinchuuriki for me? I need to see if he has the heart to do it properly."

The two Ninja turned to each other and mutually shrugged their shoulders and walked out of the cell. Then they both gestured for Enba to enter. "Go for it! Have some fun!"

Enba stared at Naruto expressionlessly. "You bastard! Pretending like your human or something!" He punched naruto in the face incredibly hard. He watched as Naruto recoiled from the punch. Then Naruto lifted his head and stared into Enba with overwhelming rage and when Enba saw Naruto's eyes he was taken aback by their bestial appearance. "You have some creepy eyes, freak!" After his insult he gripped Naruto's wrists and pulled at his skin. "Perhaps I should break your arms!" Enba then shouted as loudly as he could. Hitode and the two Ninjas at first thought it was out of rage, but as Naruto soon found out, Enba's should was actually done to drown out one particular sound. The sound of the lock of Naruto's shackles being opened.

"Pretending to be my friend! There's no way you could ever be one of us! You belong with those mutants! Like that friend of yours! The girl!" He laughed in a slightly forced way. "She's just down two floors below here suffering the same fate as you!" Naruto could feel a key being slipped into his free hand. Even though Enba was beating him very badly Naruto's rage was slipping away. His eyes stopped being red and went back to normal. Enba had told him where Isaribi was, and gave him the literal key to his freedom. After another short bit of beating, Enba turned around abruptly and walked off saying. "Good riddance!"

Hitode patted Enba's shoulder as they stormed off out of sight. "Very good Enba! Very good!"

The two Ninja looked at Naruto for a moment once the Land of Sea military men had gone. "Let's wait till later before we beat him up again."

"Yeah, we've been doing it for long enough now that it's starting to get boring . We'll do it again in a while."

They started to argue over their gambling game. The bald Ninja was insisting that the dice didn't roll properly and the black haired ninja was angry, he wanted to keep the 40 ryo he'd won. While they were in their heated argument Naruto opened the key to his other shackle and slipped his hands back into his now empty shackles. Once that had been done he called out to one of the Ninjas.

"Hey you? Bald guy! I remember you from Konoha. You used to be one of the Academy instructors right! Seems you've moved up the ranks."

The bald ninja sighed. He came up to the cell. "I'm not one of those softie academy guys you dim wit! Say something like that again and I'll break your jaw off."

"I wonder, if I wasn't in chains would you have the courage to talk to me like that you fat loser."

"Oh that's it! You know what? I feel like beating you up some more now!"

As the bald man was just about to approach Naruto , the boy slipped out of his chains and catching the Anbu by surprise he grabbed is neck and twisted it with a snap. Naruto let go of the Anbu who then fell to the ground dead.

The younger Ninja entered the cell with balled fists. "I'll make sure you'll have your spine ripped out alongside the tailed beast when we get back!"

He was much harder for Naruto to fight because Naruto didn't have the advantage of surprise. Naruto charged at him but was punched in the face. Then Naruto picked himself back up and attacked again. But the Anbu picked him up and threw him to the ground.

Naruto rolled on the cobbled floor and jumped to his feet. They seized each other up trying to get in an attack of some kind, but Naruto just couldn't find an opening. The Anbu saw naruto give an opening and landed some quick jabs at the blonde. However Naruto was tough and could endure much. He took the jabs in his stride, and the Anbu ninja's attacks created an opening for Naruto. While the Anbu was far more skilled in martial arts and had more speed, Naruto had overall more strength and endurance than him and was able to do far more with one good punch to the chest than four of the Anbu's jabs. The Anbu fell back. Naruto followed the attack up by kicking the Anbu in the knees and sweeping his leg to trip the Anbu to the ground. Then Naruto pounced on the ninja and brought his elbow down on his head. The Anbu breathed his last.

Naruto took a pair of gloves off the dead ninjas, alongside a small shinobi satchel that was to be worn the leg, secured by white straps. And he also took a pair of shinobi sandals off of the black haired ninja which fitted him conveniently. On the table they had been gambling at Naruto picked up their money, a few kunai and shuriken with some explosive paper bombs. ' _Knowing how more skilled they were than me, had they been able to use their weapons I'd be a dead man right now._ ' He thought to himself

After he'd gathered some useful items he set off through the dungeon where prisoners languished. It was dark and lit only by torches here and there, so Naruto was able to slink behind and ambush guardsmen with ease. These men were not Ninjas, but Hitode's soldiers. Naruto tried to restrain himself from cutting down Hitode's men and instead opted for knocking them out. But when he fought two or more at a time he resorted to killing them, because to go easy on them would be too risky.

Eventually he made his way to the stairs and descended to the floor below.

As he was skulking through he saw Enba, who took notice of Naruto and winked at him. He approached Naruto carefully. "I don't know how many men you've slain back there but I'll try and get you out in a way that you won't have to slay anymore."

Naruto nodded. "I killed as few as I could manage, but when I was ganged up upon I couldn't afford to take chances by holding back."

Enba sighed. "Ohh dear. Well fair enough Naruto."

He pointed to a number of barrels containing wheat. A few rats scurried around there.

"Hide behind those for a second."

Naruto did as instructed and Enba ran down some flights of halls. Naruto could hear him calling out. "Guards! Guards! The prisoner has escaped and he rampaging on the first floor get there quickly!"

"Ah no!" Cried a guard. "Not that guy, I don't want to fight him. I saw him cut down twenty mutants!"

"Well if you don't get your behinds up there you all will be joining the prisoners!"

"All right. All right. But you'd better be helping us."

"Oh I will be, but first I'll go bring some more men to help you. Don't engage the prisoner directly until I come back OK!?"

"yes sir!"

After the brief dialogue Naruto could hear a dozen men storming through the room and into the other cells. Enba then returned shortly afterwards. "OK Naruto come follow me now."

"Where's Isaribi!"

"The girl? I'm bringing you to her!"

Led by Enba, Naruto descended down the second flight of stairs, they ran past crazed prisoners who yelled all kinds of profanities and threats at them. In particular they threatened to tell the other guards what Enba had done.

"Guess there's no going back home for me now." Enba said to Naruto.

Eventually Enba stopped outside one particular cell. He turned to Naruto and handed him a key. "She's here."

Naruto looked into the cell. Isaribi was on her knees in the corner in her transformed state. Her clothes had been torn at and she had some bruises.

"Isaribi!" Naruto shouted.

This got the girls attention and the opened her eyes and beamed when she saw him.

"Naruto? You're here?"

"Yes!" Naruto opened the cell with the key and swung the gate open. "I'm sorry that you ended up getting caught. Those bastards! I see they gave you a beating."

"They haven't tortured me as much as they have done to you." Isaribi gave a pained smile. "Besides, now I don't feel as bad for having killed some of them before."

"The reunion will have to wait!" Said Enba. "We need get out of here."

Neither Naruto or Isaribi protested as they were all very eager to leave the cursed place. They made their way through the last of the rooms, as they did so the voices of the guards Enba had sent away could be heard in the distance.

They came upon the last hallway which ended at a final doorway.

"That's it!" Said Enba. "That's the exit."

Upon hearing Enba's words Naruto was filled with so much glee to have finally escaped that he rushed ahead of his companions and burst open the thick wooden door. When he did so Isaribi and Enba were both shocked to see exposed to the sunlight the full extent of all the lacerations on his back.

Naruto was surprised when he burst open the door to be greeted by Sijbrand. The blond man from the southern continent smiled at Naruto. But when he fully registered in his mind Naruto's beaten up appearance he was so shocked that he spoke in his own language. "Jij ongelukkige man!"

"Um sorry, what?" Said Naruto.

"It means – you unfortunate man – in Sijbrands native tongue." Explained Enba.

"Oh right."

"Yes, I've been learning."

"We don't have much time!" Said Sijbrand, this time in the common tongue of Naruto, Enba and Isaribi's continent. "Naruto! I thank you so much for saving my life."

"And me too." Added Enba.

"So this is how we are going to repay you." Said Sijbrand as he continued on. "We couldn't go along with that treacherous Hitode! I can't believe him! He has to lead his country I guess, but I'm not that kind of guy. I hate politics! Politics is brutal!"

"Down the dock is a boat." Said Enba. "It's loaded with some supplies for you and your friend to use. Head there immediately and we'll distract the sentries so you can slip away."

"What about you?" Asked Naruto.

Sijbrand put his arm playfully on Enba's shoulder. "Enba is going to come back with me to my homeland!" He turned to Enba. "Oh you are going to get laid there so much! Most of the maidens back there have never seen a man from the northern continent, you'll have that exotic appeal!"

Sijbrand let go of Enba. "Right sorry, it's just that the adrenaline is making me a little hyper… Listen Naruto!" He extended his hand out to the blonde. "Thank you so much for everything you've done.

Naruto shook Sijbrands hand firmly. Then Enba also shook Naruto's hand. Then they two soldiers faced Isaribi.

"Alright girl", said Sijbrand. "A friend of Naruto's is a friend of ours. You helped Naruto out and for that I am very grateful to you!"

"Me too." Added Enba.

They both bowed down to respectfully to Isaribi, whose face was as red as silk red rose.

"N – no bother! Thank you for saving me!"

"Maybe we'll see each other again." Said Naruto.

"Maybe." Replied Enba. "Before I forget…."

"Yeah?" Asked Naruto.

"That Inari you told us about?"

Naruto widened his eyes in shock. "Is he OK? Did you see him?"

Enba smiled. "Yes he's quite alright actually. He took a crossbow and headed back to the Land of Waves to kill that Gato person who worked with. He told me that you gave him the courage he needed to do it. Which was another reason to save you of course."

Naruto heaved a sigh of relief. "Oh, I'm glad he's OK."

"Ok now." Said Enba. "We must part ways now. Go!"

With that Naruto and Isaribi set off downt he dock and found the boat that they would make their escape on. It was a modest wooden boat big enough to fit two people on. It was painted as black as tar and had two oars.

"A currach!" Isaribi gasped. "That's a kind of boat from around here."

"It'll be good for sneaking away given its colour." Naruto undid the rope that held the boat the dock, and then jumped in with Isaribi. They grabbed an oar each and tore their way through the water as fast as they could. At first they barely exchanged any further words, both were very nervous and wanted to get as far away as possible from the seaside fortress they were kept in. Eventually the place faded out of sight behind them. And it was not until then, when the guards were far away and no longer a threat did the two speak.

"We finally got away." Naruto breathed a sigh of relief yet again. "I thought I was going to be taken back to Konoha and killed!"

"I thought I was goin to die in there too." Isaribi had reveryed back to her human form. Her pretty face had one patch of scales on it underneath her eye. And one of her legs was also covered in scales, and on her arm there were bands of scales here and there. "But now we're free. What do we do? Where do we go?"

"Well first I think we'll go to another country." Naruto said. "It's not safe in the Land of Sea anymore… As for what we'll do? Well I want to look into my past a little. And you said you wanted to find a cure for your mutations?"

Isaribi shook her head with her eyes closed. Then opened her eyes and stared resolutely into Naruto's eyes "Not anymore! I think I'm fine the way I am! I just want to go travel around the world with you!"

Naruto patted Isaribi's head. "Now that's the spirit!"

Isaribi turned crimson from Naruto's head pat. But she did not dislike it. Once Naruto had let go she turned her attention to his condition. "Naruto let me tend to your wounds! You are so beat up! Especially in your back! It's ridiculous that you were able to fight in your condition."

Naruto laughed. "Well I'm very strong after all!"

As Isaribi tended to Naruto's wounds they conversed about their pasts. They did so long into the evening as water lapped against the boats side.

 **If you've gotten this far then thanks for reading. Please review and many blessings to you all.**


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